diff --git a/litellm/llms/prompt_templates/factory.py b/litellm/llms/prompt_templates/factory.py
index 2abb544095d7..d7f2272c4f58 100644
--- a/litellm/llms/prompt_templates/factory.py
+++ b/litellm/llms/prompt_templates/factory.py
@@ -1,7 +1,8 @@
 from enum import Enum
 import requests, traceback
 import json, re, xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
-from jinja2 import Template, exceptions, Environment, meta
+from jinja2 import Template, exceptions, meta, BaseLoader
+from jinja2.sandbox import ImmutableSandboxedEnvironment
 from typing import Optional, Any
 import imghdr, base64
 from typing import List
@@ -219,6 +220,15 @@ def phind_codellama_pt(messages):
 
 
 def hf_chat_template(model: str, messages: list, chat_template: Optional[Any] = None):
+    # Define Jinja2 environment
+    env = ImmutableSandboxedEnvironment()
+
+    def raise_exception(message):
+        raise Exception(f"Error message - {message}")
+
+    # Create a template object from the template text
+    env.globals["raise_exception"] = raise_exception
+
     ## get the tokenizer config from huggingface
     bos_token = ""
     eos_token = ""
@@ -249,12 +259,6 @@ def _get_tokenizer_config(hf_model_name):
         eos_token = tokenizer_config["eos_token"]
         chat_template = tokenizer_config["chat_template"]
 
-    def raise_exception(message):
-        raise Exception(f"Error message - {message}")
-
-    # Create a template object from the template text
-    env = Environment()
-    env.globals["raise_exception"] = raise_exception
     try:
         template = env.from_string(chat_template)
     except Exception as e: