What the Trump Administration means by “remigration”

It’s part of an effort to remake the American population

Immigrants at Ellis Island (Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash)

By David Leblang

On November 28, 2025, the official Twitter account of the United States Department of Homeland Security (@DHSgov) posted: “The stakes have never been higher, and the goal has never been more clear: Remigration now.” The tweet received more than 70,000 likes and was amplified by White House accounts.

The use of this term is not trivial, nor should it be regarded as “business as usual” by an administration that won elections both in 2016 and 2024 on the promise of putting “America First.” The use of the term “remigration, rather than “deportation” or “removal,” is part of an increasingly overt effort to recast not just how Americans understand American history but to reshape the American population as a whole.

The word “remigration” carries specific political connotations; it is not a value neutral synonym for deportation or voluntary return. In its original political context—the phrase became popularized in Germany in response to the Syrian refugee crisis—the concept promotes the large-scale, state-orchestrated removal of non-white immigrants and even naturalized citizens with “migration backgrounds” in order to reverse demographic change and restore what its proponents describe as “ethno-cultural homogeneity.” Reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, along with scholarship from Cynthia Miller-Idriss, document that “remigration” functions as a euphemism for policies that would constitute ethnic cleansing. Do DHS’s efforts celebrating immigration enforcement fit within this remigration narrative?

If we go by DHS’s public statements, the answer is yes. The same DHS account has spent 2025 celebrating “negative net migration“ of 2.2 million people as a triumph for future generations, invoking “one nation, one culture, one shared heritage“ and declaring that the “fight for western civilization is just getting started.” The administration seeks to establish an “Office of Remigration“ inside the State Department, has frozen virtually all asylum processing, and launched recruitment drives for thousands of new “deportation officers“ and “deportation judges“ under slogans such as “End the Invasion“ and “America for Americans.” When the nation’s top domestic security agency uses terminology originating in far-right demographic theory and surrounds it with posts celebrating reductions in the foreign-born population, this pattern indicates a departure from traditional immigration enforcement rhetoric and a move toward what scholars would classify as nativist ideology.

The broader pattern of administration actions and rhetoric reinforces this interpretation. Hours after the November 27, 2025 shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., by an Afghan national, President Trump posted on Truth Social: “I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country.”

Trump specified that he would “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.” He concluded: “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation.” These statements, along with a renewed travel ban on “every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies” and the open discussion of denaturalization pathways, all align with the conceptual framework of remigration as developed in European contexts.

American immigration policy has historical precedents for restrictionist measures—Chinese Exclusion, Operation Wetback, the 1924 Immigration Act—but the current situation differs in significant respects. It shifts the rhetoric surrounding removals and deportations towards language used by movements supporting ethnic homogeneity, and it now serves as the public framing of a cabinet department’s mission. “Remigration now” represents something distinct from conventional restrictionist or enforcement-focused rhetoric. It points toward a language of cultural, racial, ethnic, and religious exclusion—a language whose original context involves demographic re-engineering along racial and civilizational lines.

By multiple measures—including the use of civilizational framing, explicit demographic objectives, and terminology borrowed from far-right movements—the Trump administration’s approach appears to transform American immigration policy discourse away from security and towards radical nativism.

David Leblang is the Miller Center’s Randolph P. Compton Professor and director of policy research. He is also the Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Endowed Professor of Politics and professor of public policy at the University’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.