TWO LITTLE LETTERS

New Trump Office Has Name Reportedly Linked to Racist Policy of the Far Right

The White House may soon have an office dedicated to expelling immigrants.

In a sweeping State Department overhaul, the Trump administration plans to create an “Office of Remigration,” embracing a term closely linked with the European far-right involving the race-based mass deportation of immigrants.

The revamp is part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump to deport millions of undocumented migrants. According to a document sent by the State Department to six congressional committees and obtained by multiple news outlets, the new office would serve as a hub “for immigration issues and repatriation tracking.”

The office would be part of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, a State Department official cited by Axios said.

The plan, sent for approval by July 1, has sparked alarm as the term “remigration” has become a buzzword for the global far right. In Europe, the ideology calls for the expulsion or forced repatriation of non-white immigrants and their descendants, regardless of their legal status. It has been used by far-right parties such as Austria’s Freedom party (FPÖ) which in June 2024 urged the EU to name a “remigration commissioner.”

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“The Office of Remigration will serve as the [Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration]’s hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking,” the document said. “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.”

In a nod to remigration ideology, the Office of Remigration “will also actively facilitate the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin or legal status,” Wired reported.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the State Department for comment.

Wendy Via, CEO and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, described the plans as “outrageous.”

“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,” she told Wired.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, said on X: “In a move likely intended to cause public outrage, Sec. Rubio is proposing eliminating the refugee and migration division at the State Department and replacing it with an ‘Office of Remigration’ — a term closely associated with the European far right and ethnic cleansing.”

“The way that it worked before, Population Refugee Migration was basically an entire bureau dedicated to bringing people into the United States,” a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Axios.

“It had the migration function—it’s in the name—we’re just reversing the flow of migrants who shouldn’t be here to go out of the country.”

The development comes weeks after DHS data revealed that Trump—despite his fiery anti-immigrant rhetoric—is actually deporting people at a slower pace than his predecessor Joe Biden. According to Reuters, the Trump administration deported 37,660 people in its first month in office. That’s below the monthly average of 57,000 removals and returns during Biden’s final year as president.

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Isabel van BrugenFreelance Writer

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