Another Project 2025 planned attack that is already unfolding is remigration. It’s the far-right buzzword for forced repatriation that has become popular in MAGAland and on the GOP campaign trail. Remigration is a political concept that’s been actively pushed for a decade by European far-right groups intent on purging their countries not only of undocumented immigrants but also legal citizens. “Remigration” is not a new word or idea, but it is being newly and enthusiastically adopted and promoted by Christian nationalist and far right leaders, including some in Project 2025’s orbit such as Stephen Miller, Trump’s dark general of immigration – as well as Miller’s former boss, Trump himself, and top GOP campaign officials.

In Europe, the goal is to forcibly repatriate, or expel, “non-ethnically European” legal immigrants and their children, even those born in European countries, back to their countries or places of origin. In the US, the script is the same, but is applied to Mexican, Haitian, Muslim, and other immigrants-cum-citizens who are not white. In recent weeks, global headlines captured the racist accusations repeated by Trump, JD Vance, and other top conservatives, who falsely accused Haitian immigrants, many of them citizens, of eating the pets of Springfield, Ohio, residents, despite their knowing the claim was false.

On September 14, Trump openly called for the forced return of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, even those who are citizens, as well as immigrants in Aurora, Colorado – many Venezuelans. Below is his gone-viral tweet on his Truth Social platform – one that Miller reposted with gusto in all caps, crowing: “THE TRUMP PLAN TO END THE INVASION OF SMALL TOWN AMERICA: REMIGRATION!”

Across MAGAland, conservative leaders and right-wing media pundits have quickly picked up the baton, challenging the citizenship status of legal immigrants who gained entry to the US via legal mechanisms such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and have become citizens. Underneath this parsing of immigration policy is an ugly, glaring truth: remigration is aimed primarily at foreign-born people with brown or black skins, or non-Christians – read Muslims.

Above all, remigration is the code word for a racial dream of purging Europe – and now the US – of its people of color and diversity. It’s a white nationalist dream, and – no surprise – neo-Nazi groups are also cheered by the idea. Weeks before Trump’s remigration post, armed members of the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe wearing swastikas marched in Springfield to demand expulsion of Haitians there, and to claim credit for pushing the racist pet-eating story on social media into the public consciousness.

Project 2025’s expanded crackdown. While Project 2025’s vision paper avoids the word remigration, it extends its draconian crackdown beyond a call for mass detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants to legal citizens. It calls for a “pause” on legal immigration if there are application backlogs (historically there always are), and ending family-based immigration or “chain migration,” including spousal visas and automatic birthplace citizenship for any child born in the US. It would also end TPS and other programs, a goal Trump pushed for during his presidency. 

Remigration is the code word for a racial dream of purging Europe – and now the US –- of its people of color and diversity

Project 2025 would go further – it would try to weed out those with pending or unresolved citizenship applications, calling for their immediate deportation. All of this is a white recipe for cleansing America of Black, brown, and non-Christian citizens, future, current, and maybe past. There are even suggestions for a retroactive review of cases and visas, including same-sex marriage visas and entry by LGBTQIA+ green card holders (permanent residents) and citizens. When the Germans aim remigration at “non-assimilated” citizens, they are talking about Muslims and the Roma, but some also hope to expel LGBTQIA+ people who aren’t welcome in the Catholic, traditional, pro-family vision of a remade Europe.

Dark Historic Roots

A white nationalist weapon. Remigration supporters tout the Great Replacement Theory, which argues that Europe’s white Christian identity and heritage is mortally at risk of erasure by non-white foreigners, especially Muslims and Islamic culture (read our paper on Propaganda for more on this theory). That view neatly ignores the historic, consistent presence of non-white, non-Christian minority citizens in Europe who shaped its culture, including, of course, Jews. Many of Europe’s far right parties have scored major gains in recent elections, putting them into seats of parliamentary power to push such policies (see our recent Special Report, Making Europe Illiberal Again).

Nazi roots. As a concept, remigration has roots that go back to World War 2 and Nazi Germany, when, from 1933 to 1945, Germany pursued an aggressive policy of forced emigration for the Reich’s Jews there and in Austria: 100,000 of the 340,000 who fled to other European countries were subsequently killed in the Holocaust. Europe’s surviving Jews were largely denied safe havens and requests to go back to their home countries and encouraged to go en masse to then-Palestine to be resettled. (At the same time, Britain, for example, capped Jewish immigration to Palestine to 75,000 people over five years, which led to many being illegally smuggled to Palestine, a policy known as Aliyah Bet. Britain also jailed thousands of illegal Jewish immigrants in Cyprus after the war). Then, in 1948, with the creation of the State of Israel and the Law of Return, limitations of Jewish immigration were lifted. 

Since then, remigration of foreign-born citizens has remained a xenophobic neo-Nazi dream. The concept really took off in 2019 in Germany, pushed by prominent voices in the pan-European extremist, anti-immigrant, white nationalist Generation Identity movement. They include political thinkers such as Austrian extremist Martin Sellner, the late Guillaume Faye, and Renaud Camus -- a few spotlight cheerleaders. But it’s more famous names such as Germany’s Alice Weidel and Björn Höcke, top-ranking Nazi-linked leaders of Germany’s Alliance for Democracy (AfD) party, and French far right leader Éric Zemmour, a TV pundit and head of the populist French party Reconquest (Reconquête) who’ve pushed it to become more mainstream.

In January, Germans were shocked to learn of a prior secret meeting Selner and other Identitarian leaders, three AfD officials including top Weidel aide Roland Hartwig, and some members of Germany’s largest opposition party, the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) to discuss a “master plan” for deportation of migrants and “non-assimilated Germans”– i.e., remigration – should the AfD gain enough power to push that idea. In September, the AfD scored historic gains in state elections, including in western Thuringia, where Höcke leads the party. In France, the xenophobic Zemmour, who used to be part of Le Pen’s National Rally, proposed a “Ministry of Remigration” a few years ago. As of March 2022, a French OpinionWay poll found that 55% of French people supported remigration. For now, Le Pen's National Rally remains opposed, but some of its leaders openly back the proposal. Across Europe, other far-right parties are also openly vocal about rooting out their foreign-born citizens.

Pro-remigration voices are also calling for pseudo-ghettoes for immigrants with “foreign roots”– another policy that emerged in Nazi Germany. Here, “ethnopluralism” is the academic term used to push for people of different ethnicities to be segregated, an odious proposal that scholar José Ángel Maldonado, among others, views as a "soft type of ethnic cleansing under the guise of deportation and segregation.” Scratch the surface of the much-decried racist accusations of Haitians eating pets, then, and one finds apartheid policies reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

Pro-remigration voices are also calling for pseudo-ghettoes for immigrants with “foreign roots”.

Flash forward to the present, and the US. Rather than back down, conservatives and openly Neo-Nazi groups such as Blood Tribe have ramped up their rhetoric. Remigration is a battle cry, and is proving to be a popular conservative voter draw for candidates on the stump. It’s a successful polarizing wedge issue being amplified to stoke fear, racism, and divisionism in local communities such as Springfield, Ohio, as the November elections draw near. Looking ahead, immigration activists are primed to fight not only for a federal rollback of TPS and other immigration policies if the GOP regains the presidency, but an increase of legal and legislative attacks at state and local levels to roll back legal resettlement of already-approved refugees and others seeking legal citizenship. If Project 2025 is enacted, don’t be surprised by the call for remigration.

If the GOP loses, Project 2025’s architects won’t stop, either. The racist cat is out of the bag: remigration is providing a new flag for whiteness in America, as it is across Europe. It’s also a very dangerous attack on the diverse fabric of America that demands public vigilance and a firm rebuttal, including responses to late-night ALL CAPs wild Trump tweets. It works to make Americans fear new and older immigrants and normalizes the notion of expelling foreign-born citizens. To quote Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and expert on fascism and authoritarianism, about Trump’s recent embrace of migration, “He chooses his words carefully.” Attention must be paid.  

-- Anne-christine d’Adesky