On Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration had taken new steps towards “building an America First State Department” by notifying Congress of a “reorganization plan.” The massive overhaul, first proposed in April, will reportedly downsize or eliminate hundreds of bureaus and offices; cut thousands of domestic civil service and foreign service jobs; and redirect the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor to focus on “Democracy and Western Values.”
A small but noteworthy part of this shake-up at the State Department should raise particular alarm: a plan to create an “Office of Remigration.”
As Mother Jones reported previously, the term “remigration” is rooted in the debunked Great Replacement theory and favored by the European far-right and White nationalist extremists. It calls for the forcible repatriation or mass expulsion of non-ethnically European immigrants and their descendants, regardless of immigration status or citizenship, and an end to multiculturalism. In 2019, the Associated Press described remigration as the “chilling notion of returning immigrants to their native lands in what amounts to a soft-style ethnic cleansing.”
The proposed establishment of an “Office of Remigration” is the latest push by the Trump administration to curb most, if not all, immigration to the United States (with the notable exception of South Africa’s white Afrikaners and investors willing to buy a $5 million gold card). This includes ideologically purging students and lawful residents, on top of trying to rid the country of all undocumented immigrants and summoning wartime powers to expel hundreds of noncitizens to a foreign prison without due process.
The anti-immigrant buzzword “remigration” was made popular by Austrian identitarian activist Martin Sellner. It has since become a policy platform embraced by Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and far-right politicians across Europe. Earlier this month, a “remigration” summit in Italy reportedly gathered hundreds of lawmakers and activists—including a former Trump-endorsed candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives—in support of repatriating “non-assimilated” immigrants and European-born citizens alike. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism called it an “ethnic cleansing summit.”
Trump’s “Office of Remigration” would fall under the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, one State Department official told Axios. “The Office of Remigration will serve as the [Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration]’s hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking,” according to a copy of the 136-page plan shared with six Congressional committees to be approved before July 1 and reviewed by Wired. “It will provide a policy platform for interagency coordination with DHS and other agencies on removals/repatriations, and for intra-agency policy work to advance the President’s immigration agenda.”
The move would effectively undercut the bureau’s original stated mission to “provide protection, ease suffering, and resolve the plight of persecuted and uprooted people around the world.” Instead, according to the document submitted to Congress, the bureau’s functions will be consolidated into three offices under the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Migration Matters and “substantially reorganized” to deliver on the administration’s policy priorities.
One of such offices, the “Office of Remigration,” would “actively facilitate the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin or legal status.” Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would offer a stipend and financial travel assistance to immigrants who decided to use the CBP Home mobile app to self-deport. Recently, immigration lawyers have also seen “notices to self-deport” posted in immigration courts, warning that they’re misleading and intended to scare people.
In a recent post on an apparent State Department Substack, Samuel Samson, a senior adviser for the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor singled out “mass migration” and the replacement of “spiritual and cultural roots” as threats to “democratic self-governance.” He further called for a partnership focused on the United States and Europe’s “shared Western civilizational heritage.”
Last September, in the lead up to the presidential elections, Donald Trump invoked “remigration” in a Truth Social post stating his plans to “return Kamala [Harris]’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration).” At the time, Trump’s nod to the European far right’s policy caught Sellner’s attention and was celebrated as another step towards taking remigration global and mainstream. Now, it might be policy. When asked by Wired about the incursion of remigration in the United States, Sellner said Trump “ticks many of the boxes. The “common line” between America and Europe, he added, is “preserving the cultural continuity by stopping replacement migration.”
Sellner, who was barred from entering Germany and the United Kingdom and had his US travel authorization canceled in 2019 because of his suspected links to the Christchurch shooter, told Wired he might try to get a new visa, saying “I hope I will touch American soil again soon.” One of the organizers and speakers at this month’s remigration summit in Italy, Sellner reportedly advertised the event by lauding the United States as an example, saying “Remigration is on everyone’s lips.”
