As part of a sweeping reorganization of the State Department, the Trump administration is creating an Office of Remigration. Remigration is an immigration policy embraced by extremists that calls for the removal of all migrants—including “non-assimilated” citizens—with the goal of creating white ethnostates in Western countries.
The details of the plan are contained in a 136-page notification document sent by the State Department to six Congressional commitees—including the House Foreign Affairs and Appropriations Committees and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—for approval by July 1, according to a copy reviewed by WIRED.
“The Office of Remigration will serve as the [Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration]’s hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking,” the document reads. “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 notification says that the Office of Remigration “will also actively facilitate the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin or legal status,” which is a key aim of remigration ideology.
The document, which was first reported on by Reuters and The Handbasket, also outlines dramatic changes to the US diplomatic services, including the elimination of much of the Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Bureau, and the addition of a new deputy assistant secretary position to oversee “Democracy and Western Values.”
“The Department of State is notifying Congress of its intent to reorganize the Department’s domestic operations, including more than 300 bureaus and offices, to refocus on core U.S. foreign policy objectives and the needs of contemporary diplomacy,” states the document’s introduction.
The State Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the creation of the Office of Remigration.
“It’s outrageous,” Wendy Via, CEO and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, tells WIRED. “There is no hiding from the fact that the ultimate goal of ‘remigration’ is purely about ethnic cleansing. It is a terrible day for our country when ‘remigration’ proponents are crediting the US and Trump’s administration for normalizing the term.”
Though President Donald Trump does not appear to have used the term “remigration” publicly since taking office, he did reference it last September while discussing his immigration policy plans.
“As President I will immediately end the migrant invasion of America,” Trump wrote on X. “We will stop all migrant flights, end all illegal entries, terminate the Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals (CBP One App), revoke deportation immunity, suspend refugee resettlement, and return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration).”
This was quickly backed up by Stephen Miller, a close Trump adviser seen as the architect of the administration’s immigration policies, who wrote on X: “THE TRUMP PLAN TO END THE INVASION OF SMALL TOWN AMERICA: REMIGRATION!”
While remigration is likely an unknown term for most Americans, it has been gaining significant traction in Europe. In recent years, the policy of remigration has become popular among far-right and populist politicians in Europe.
Earlier this month, the first ever Remigration Summit took place at a conference near Milan, featuring upwards of 400 attendees and a slate of far-right European lawmakers and speakers from Ireland, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, and Germany. It was met with a large protest march and major police presence.
Two Americans, Jacky Eubanks and Cyan Quinn, also spoke. Eubanks, who espouses Christian nationalist ideas, was a Trump-endorsed candidate in 2022 for the Michigan House of Representatives and was previously a Turning Point USA field representative. During her speech, Eubanks referenced how the “founding stock” of the US came from Europe, ignoring the existence of Native Americans.
“President Trump is keeping his promise to deport illegal aliens, and the American people are hugely supportive of his agenda,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, tells WIRED in response to questions about the apparent similarities between the remigration agenda and the administration’s immigration policies. “Your outlet should spend time covering all the dangerous criminal illegals the president is removing instead of attending and conflating random foreign conferences that have nothing to do with the president.” Miller did not respond to a request for comment.
Even before the Trump administration proposed the establishment of an Office of Remigration within the State Department, experts, some of the conference speakers, and even Martin Sellner, the man most responsible for promoting the idea of remigration across the globe, claimed that Trump, since taking office, was already seeking to implement remigration in the US.
“Yes, [Trump] ticks many of the boxes,” Sellner, the Austrian activist and former member of a neo-Nazi group, tells WIRED when asked if he believes remigration is already in action in the US. “There are differences between Europe and the USA, but the common line is the same: preserving the cultural continuity by stopping replacement migration. Reversing the flows with border security, mass repatriations, and incentives to leave.”
While the State Department has not, until now, mentioned the establishment of an Office of Remigration, the policies the Trump administration has overseen mirror those laid out in a 30-year plan Sellner outlined on his website to implement his racist goals.
On his site, he lays out a three-phase plan to implement remigration. The first phase, dubbed the “Immediate Stabilization of Asylum Chaos,” has 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 US.
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.
The second phase of Sellner’s plan, following the initial removal of undocumented immigrants, includes the removal of “migrants who entered the country legally and have a residence/work permit, or temporary visa, but are an economical, criminal or cultural burden.” The final phase targets citizens who are seen as “non assimilated,”and it involves passing laws to “target parallel societies with economic and cultural pressure” and entice citizens to migrate abroad with the use of loans, payments, and other assistance. The plan, Sellner claims, will allow “the wounds of multiculturalism to heal.”
Sellner has been promoting this plan across Europe for several years and has developed a continent-wide network of far-right groups, political parties, and populist politicians who have helped the remigration policy gain significant traction. Marches to promote remigration have been held in numerous capitals across EU, and in the UK, the Homeland Party has adopted remigration as one of its core policies. Last year, Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), whose members have spoken at events organized by Sellner’s Identitarian Movement in Austria, even called on the EU to appoint a commissioner for remigration.
Sellner’s phases are centered on the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which posits that countries with traditionally majority white Christian populations are being invaded by Muslim hordes or flooded with migrants from developing countries as part of a secret plan by a group of global elites to undermine “native” populations.
The idea of remigration first took hold in extremist circles over a decade ago in France. French author Renaud Camus first floated the great replacement conspiracy theory in a pair of books published over a decade ago and adherents of the ethno-nationalist identitarianism movement embraced the concept of remigration soon after.
The concept did not gain more widespread traction until recently, with Sellner promoting the ideology in Austria and then Germany, where the extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has embraced the policy of remigration. (The Trump administration has shown strong support for the AfD, with Vice President JD Vance meeting with AfD leader Alice Weidel ahead of February’s elections, Elon Musk hosting a livestream with Weidel , and Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week slamming Germany’s domestic spy agency for labeling the party “a confirmed rightwing extremist group.” The designation, which is temporary pending a court judgment, could lead the party to be banned.)
In his youth, Sellner was a member of the openly neo-Nazi group called “Stolz und Frei” (Proud and Free). Today, Sellner claims that extremist activity was due to “being really young” and claims there is “nothing racist or white nationalist about” remigration, which he describes as “an umbrella term to change the flows of mass migration.” Sellner is currently banned from traveling to a number of countries, including the US, following investigations into his communications with the shooter who killed 51 people in a 2019 spree targeting the Muslim community in Christchurch, New Zealand. The shooter also donated money to Sellner’s Identitarian Movement of Austria group. “Since Trump is now president, I’ll try to apply for a visa again,” Sellner tells WIRED. “I think I have a far better chance for a fair hearing. I hope I will touch American soil again soon.”
At the conference near Milan, Eubanks told those watching that “American policies [should] not only consist of mass deportations but include a complete moratorium on all immigration until assimilation.” She did not respond to requests for comment from WIRED.
Quinn, who previously worked with the white nationalist publication Counter-Currents, was there representing White Papers Policy Institute, a group that describes itself as “a professional team of pro-White advocates centered around a single mission: bringing a pro-White perspective to analysis of both foreign and domestic policy.” Researchers have reported that the group appears to be run by a young man from Michigan with ties to the neo-Nazi ecosystem. A review of the analysis and articles produced by the group also show that it consistently pushes racist stereotypes.
During her presentation near Milan, Quinn said that the Trump administration’s $1,000 payment to undocumented immigrants who self-deport was similar to WPPI’s own “American Repatriation Policy Platform.” Quinn then suggested the administration should go even further and encourage legal residents and citizens to leave the US by giving them a $72,000 “repatriation payment.”
“Remigration is in fact already taking place in the US,” Quinn tells WIRED. “The first flight of 64 self-deportees following President Trump’s stipend announcement have already arrived home safely in Honduras and Columbia.”
Jared Taylor—a high-profile figure in US far-right circles and head of the New Century Foundation, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, as well as the publisher of the American Renaissance website and magazine—also attended the event. Many of those speaking at the conference, including Sellner, have spoken at Taylor’s American Renaissance conference hosted in Tennessee every year.
Taylor, in a recap of the conference posted on X, called the Milan conference “a smashing success,” concluding that “our European cousins are streets ahead of us in terms of serious, political organization.” Taylor did not respond to a request for comment.
The New York Young Republican Club, whose gala Trump addressed by video in December, also hailed the conference in a press release published on its website earlier this month, claiming that “momentum is building on both sides of the Atlantic. Let remigration be not only a policy, but a global movement.” The website also asked readers to do their bit to support remigration in the US by saving the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tip line on their phone. “Call ICE if you see anything or anyone suspicious. Get ’em out!,” the group wrote.
The club did not respond to a question about whether they believed the Trump administration is currently enacting remigration policies.
For experts like Via, there is real concern about the increased interest in an overtly racist policy from far-right groups and figures in the US and the impact that will have on the global far-right movement.
“There is an increased desire to ally with American actors, as it’s clear that the European far right is looking to Trump and the United States for inspiration and as proof that remigration is possible,” Via says. “We’re seeing more cooperation and collaboration transnationally, which will only grow, and American extremists will likely have a hand in shaping migration policy transnationally.”
