Critics Warn 'Office of Remigration' Is Just Right-Wing Code for Trump's Office of Ethnic Cleansing

Eight months after U.S. President Donald Trump publicly called for a policy of "remigration"—a term that's become a rallying cry among far-right groups in Europe and sparked comparisons to ethnic cleansing—the U.S. State Department said Thursday that it plans to create an office devoted to the project, with refugee aid resources diverted to Trump's rapidly accelerating mass deportation campaign.

A State Department official toldAxios that the proposed creation of the Office of Remigration would be part of a broad reorganization of the agency, with a division that resettled Afghan people who supported the U.S. during the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan eliminated.

A proposal sent to Congress detailed how the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration's immigration work would be consolidated into three offices, including the Office of Remigration, to shift the bureau's focus "towards supporting the administration's efforts to return illegal aliens to their country of origin or legal status."

The office would be a "hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking," according to the proposal.

Trump first called for a "remigration" program in September 2024 ahead of the presidential election, saying he would "return Kamala [Harris]'s illegal migrants to their home countries" in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

The comment came amid his attacks on Haitian legal residents in Springfield, Ohio and Venezuelan migrants, claiming the U.S. was under an "invasion" and saying he would "ship them back to their country."

His use of the term remigration went largely unremarked on by the corporate media, said the news analysis group Media Matters at the time, but Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan noted that Trump was "calling for the ethnic cleansing of legal immigrants in the United States."

"Public polling is showing decreasing support for Trump's immigration agenda, as Americans wake up to the reality that mass deportation means arrests of our neighbors and friends."

The term has been embraced by far-right groups in Europe including Alternative for Germany and Austria's Freedom Party, which called for the European Union to appoint a remigration commissioner last year.

Remigration policy has long been promoted by Austrian far-right activist Martin Sellner, who had communications with the white supremacist who killed 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019. Sellner has denied involvement in the attacks.

On his website, Wired reported on Thursday, Sellner "lays out a three-phase plan to implement remigration" that includes "striking similarities to Trump's current immigration policies":

The primary aim of this phase is "stopping the invasion." The Trump administration, invoking the Alien Enemies Act in March, cited an alleged "invasion" by a Venezuelan gang as a source of authority to take unprecedented steps to remove migrants from the U.S.

Sellner's website also lists a number of "tools" that can be used to achieve remigration, which includes "stop family reunification"—something Trump was doing even in his first term in office. In the first phase, Sellner also encourages governments to "create an ultimatum and economic incentives to self-deport." The Trump administration is already purportedly offering undocumented immigrants a stipend of $1,000 if they use the CBP Home App to self deport.

Sellner adds that governments should "cut humanitarian aid" to force immigrants to stop entering the country. Last month, the Trump administration attempted to cut legal aid to unaccompanied migrant children, only for a court to temporarily block its efforts.

Julia Ebner, a researcher with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the University of Oxford, toldThe Guardian last year that the term "sounds a lot more benign than what it actually stands for. Because, particularly in the context of Germany and Austria, there is still a very strong association of the term mass deportation with the Holocaust."

Far-right lawmakers and activists from the U.S., Germany, Ireland, and France were among more than 400 attendees at the first-ever Remigration Summit near Milan earlier this month. Jacky Eubanks, who was endorsed by Trump during her 2022 run for the Michigan House of Representatives, claimed in a speech at the summit that Europeans were the "founding stock" of the U.S., disregarding the existence of indigenous people across the continent.

The State Department is planning to open the Office of Remigration as the administration ramps up its mass deportation operations, with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller informing immigration officials last week that federal agents should begin arresting 3,000 immigrants per day—tripling numbers from earlier this year.

The push has coincided with mandates for federal law enforcement agents to assist in raids and arrests and the targeting of people at formerly protected locations like courthouses.

"We're seeing the Trump administration take the unprecedented step of arresting non-citizens who are following the government's rules and procedures, and showing up for their court hearings," Nayna Gupta, the policy director for the American Immigration Council, toldThe Guardian on Thursday. "They are desperate to reach a certain number of arrests per day. And the only way they can find non-citizens easily and quickly is to go to the courthouses, where [immigrants] are doing exactly what they're supposed to do."

The Washington Postreported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement in more than 20 states have been directed to arrest people at courthouses during court proceedings.

"The Trump administration is pressuring judges in immigration courtrooms to function more like cogs in the mass deportation machinery rather than as fair and balanced arbiters of the law," Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the Post. "That is not the way Americans want and understand our judicial system to work. Immigration judges should be worried about this."

Gupta said the administration is "doubling down" on its "illusion that they had been given a broad mandate to effectuate an aggressive immigration enforcement agenda."

Less than a third of Americans in a March Gallup poll agreed with Trump's stated goal of removing all undocumented immigrants from the United States; those who said "some" undocumented immigrants should be deported said that committing violent crimes should be a prerequisite for removal.

"Public polling is showing decreasing support for Trump's immigration agenda," said Gupta, "as Americans wake up to the reality that mass deportation means arrests of our neighbors and friends, masked agents in our communities, and people afraid to go to work and show up to school, in ways that undermine our local economies."