New Security Minister Must Rebuild Trust With Prosecutors After Steinert's Tenure

Trinidad Steinert's time as Public Security Minister came to an abrupt end on a Tuesday morning in May, when she posted about a police operation in Temucuicui that she claimed the ministry had coordinated. Within hours, Roberto Garrido, the acting national prosecutor, issued a carefully worded correction to the press—one that made clear the operation had nothing to do with her. The message was unmistakable, and it landed like a final blow to a tenure already fractured by months of missteps.

The trouble between Steinert and the prosecutors had been building for weeks. She had a habit of appearing at press conferences to discuss ongoing investigations, sometimes without inviting the prosecutors actually handling the cases. On April 29th, she held a press conference at the National Prosecutor's office itself to discuss a kidnapping case in San Miguel—the same day the National Prosecutor, Ángel Valencia, was giving his annual address. She didn't invite Valencia or the regional prosecutor in charge of the investigation. Prosecutors across the country noticed. They talked about it quietly in their offices. The message they heard was that a former regional prosecutor turned minister thought she could speak for their work.

But the Temucuicui post crossed a line. Garrido's response made clear that the ministry hadn't even been informed about the operation beforehand. In an interview with Radio Infinita, he emphasized that the arrest of a suspect named Huenchullán was the result of a long investigation that belonged to no single authority—not the police, not the prosecutors, and certainly not the Security Ministry. The distinction mattered enormously. While the ministry has administrative authority over the police, it cannot give them orders or direct their investigations. That power belongs exclusively to the prosecutors. A minister who didn't understand or respect that boundary was not viable.

Steinert's problems extended far beyond her relationship with prosecutors. Her tenure had begun with controversy over the firing of Consuelo Peña, the PDI's intelligence chief. The PDI's director, Eduardo Cerna, took public responsibility for the decision in Congress, but sources close to the situation said Steinert had demanded the firing. The dispute centered on internal conflicts within the police, with Steinert apparently aligned with detectives in the narcotics unit—some of whom had worked with her in Iquique—whom Peña had transferred on suspicion of corruption. After Peña's dismissal, the internal investigation into those officers was abandoned. One active detective, speaking anonymously, described the outcome bluntly: those four colleagues were now shielded from scrutiny, which was damaging even to them because suspicion would linger forever.

Other missteps followed. Steinert disbanded the ministry's Data Unit, which had been well-regarded. She filed a legal complaint in Valdivia accusing a case of assault of involving a kidnapping under the State Security Law—a charge the regional appeals court later rejected entirely. Most significantly, Congress demanded that she present a comprehensive security plan, as required by law. During a nearly ninety-minute congressional session, she delivered a confused presentation. Afterward, she admitted to a radio station that she hadn't expected to be asked for an actual security plan, despite the fact that the law creating her ministry explicitly required one.

By mid-May, the Comptroller's office was preparing a damaging report about her conduct. The opposition had announced an interpellation. The National Prosecutor had publicly contradicted her. President José Antonio Kast decided the situation was untenable. He replaced her with Martín Arrau, a civil engineer from the Catholic University, former governor of Ñuble, former constitutional convention delegate, and most recently minister of public works. Arrau had Kast's personal trust—unlike Steinert—and he had political skill.

Arrau's first task is to present the security plan Congress demanded from Steinert. His larger challenge is to rebuild what Steinert broke. The National Prosecutor told a television program two weeks earlier that he had never met with her once. Crime expert Pablo Zeballos warned that when citizens lose faith in political solutions to crime, they turn to vigilantism and extrajudicial justice—dangerous ground. Arrau faces real threats: recent attacks in Araucanía after a quiet period, the regrouping of Tren de Aragua through a faction called Los Brothers, which has carried out kidnappings and murders in Santiago and Concepción. Just days before Arrau took office, prosecutors and the PDI arrested sixteen people connected to that faction in Concepción.

Arrau has no operational authority. Everything depends on trust with the prosecutors. One prosecutor explained the reality plainly: the Public Ministry is autonomous, and no fiscal likes politicians trying to give them orders or claiming credit for their work. Rebuilding those relationships would not be simple. The damage ran deep. A PDI source added that Director Cerna's alignment with Steinert had weakened him internally—officers questioned whether he had told the truth to Congress, and that doubt lingered. Arrau would need to avoid repeating those mistakes. The palace had chosen him not for technical expertise in security matters, but for his ability to organize, to build bridges between institutions, and to think like an engineer about a complex problem. In his first remarks to the press, he acknowledged the challenge: Chile had a deep, extensive, and complex security problem, and he would work with all his strength to defend the human right to safety.