LIKE much of Argentina, the Liniers neighbourhood in Buenos Aires is an immigrant hub.
A busy commercial area, it once hosted Spanish tailor shops, Italian fruit sellers, Lebanese boutiques and so many Eastern European Jews that a Yiddish newspaper had circulated there.
Now, Peruvian and Bolivian shop stalls that sell mounds of quinoa and purple corn buzz with a new wave of arrivals who have made Argentina home.
But on a recent Friday, the neighbourhood’s rhythm was suddenly disrupted.
Hundreds of law enforcement agents descended on shops, cafes and malls, demanding documents, checking legal statuses and detaining people in new sweeping raids conducted by Argentine authorities who have taken a tougher stance on immigration.
“It’s the first time this has happened to me in 40 years here,” said Julia Aguillon, 42, a Peruvian shop assistant who was at a mall in Liniers when the agents stormed in and ordered people not to move.
“I was shaking.”
Argentina has often stood out for its openness to immigration, absorbing Europeans, Latin Americans and Jews who fled persecution in Europe and even the Nazis who had hunted them.
But under President Javier Milei, a right-wing libertarian, the government is joining a global trend of cracking down on immigration, and is publicising its shift with an aggressive enforcement messaging similar to that employed by US President Donald Trump’s administration.
Critics call it an unnecessary and dangerous political gimmick meant to emulate Trump and other right-wing leaders, but supporters say Milei is taking necessary measures to overhaul an immigration policy that had long been too lax.
“Under President Milei, Argentina regained control of its borders,” Alejandra Monteoliva, the country’s security minister, said in a recent video.
“If you’re a foreigner and try to enter or remain in Argentina illegally, we will identify you,” she warned in another, “expel you and you will not be able to return to our country.”
More than two million foreign nationals live legally in Argentina, accounting for roughly 5% of the population, according to government data.
There are no public figures on the number of migrants living in Argentina illegally because a lack of political focus and easy access to legalisation have largely kept the issue off the radar.
Milei has introduced tougher immigration measures, including imposing stricter criteria for migrants to earn permanent residency and making it easier for the government to deport those accused of committing crimes.
The government shifted the role of overseeing immigration from the interior to the security ministry, effectively making migration a law enforcement issue with an emphasis on border control.
The Milei administration has claimed – without providing evidence – that the tens of thousands of South Americans deported by the Trump administration could fuel illegal immigration in Argentina.
Argentina deported 620 immigrants in 2024, about a 40% increase from the previous year.
In January, Monteoliva announced that nearly 5,000 people had been “expelled, denied entry or extradited” during the previous two months.
Despite the Milei administration’s aims, Argentina’s immigration policy is still far less strict than in the United States under Trump. But what has changed drastically is the Argentine government’s tone.
“Law and order to make Argentina great again,” Patricia Bullrich, a powerful conservative senator and a former security minister, wrote on X. The post included a video with an action-movie soundtrack that Bullrich said showed several people being detained for deportation.
Immigration advocates say the increasingly threatening language is gratuitous and has sown unjustified fears among newcomers.
Migration “has never been a sensitive or difficult topic for Argentina”, said Diego Morales, a lawyer at the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, a human rights and civil liberties watchdog.
“They’re creating an internal enemy where there isn’t one.”
At the birth of the Argentine republic in the early 19th century, the government saw European immigration as essential to the country’s growth and vowed to populate the vast nation.
Milei government officials now argue that Argentina’s immigration system does not work and that too many immigrants are living in the country without legal migration status.
The cost of treating them in public hospitals and educating them in schools, they say, had helped bloat the government’s budget.
The raid in Liniers was part of a series of continuing immigration operations.
Last month in Once, a district of Buenos Aires famous for its textile trade and Jewish population, police descended on a shopping gallery and arrested four foreigners who they said had criminal records and now faced deportation.
The authorities posted footage of the arrests in a social media clip in which the four migrants’ names scrolled across the screen in a font from the popular video game franchise Grand Theft Auto.
The concrete results of some of the operations seemed less impressive.
In Liniers, the police identified 615 migrants, of which, they said, only 15 did not have legal status.
How Milei’s policy will evolve and how Argentine society will respond in the long run are unclear, but a new degree of anxiety is already evident in immigrant enclaves.
“Our president started acting all Yankee,” said Alan Romero, a server at a Bolivian restaurant in Buenos Aires.
“You have got to be careful now.” — ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
