The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Administration Urges 'Remigration,' Borrowing White Nationalist Language

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

The Trump administration has refocused some of its immigration policy on a push to get immigrants to "remigrate," or leave the country voluntarily. We discuss the administration's language and policy and examine its links to white nationalism.This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo, and domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll still be another year older. Happy birthday to me, and here's the show. A birthday is a good way to brighten up a Monday, right? And another Sagittarius. Love to hear it. That's right. He might have just had a birthday. Happy birthday to you all. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Jimenez-Bustillo, and I cover immigration policy.

And I'm Odette Yousaf. I cover domestic extremism. And today on the show, the Trump administration has refocused some of its immigration policy on pushing immigrants to, quote, remigrate, to leave the country voluntarily. We're going to take a deep dive into the roots of this policy and how it's shaping life in America today. Odette, let's just start with the basics. What does remigration mean? So re-migration is a concept that, you know, in its current iteration, is traced back to the white nationalist movement in Europe. And it basically means ethnically cleansing traditionally white countries through the organized deportation of non-white people. You know, this kind of sounds straightforward on its face, Sarah, but I think it masks a lot of questions, you know, questions around, okay, is it referring to only immigrants? Is it referring to specifically immigrants who lack legal permanent status?

Does it also apply to children of immigrants? So I think it really, the definition can actually differ somewhat depending on where the discussion is happening. Yeah. And can you tell us more about the history, the backstory of how this term has been used in the past? Yeah. So again, this is in the current iteration, it's really traced back to France to the same person who is sort of known for coining the term the great replacement conspiracy theory. So that's a conspiracy theory that claims that people of color are being deliberately brought into traditionally white nations, traditionally European nations,

in order to systematically replace them and dilute the culture of that place. And so it's an idea that was really born in France, but took fire within the last two and a half decades, primarily through a movement that's become known as the Identitarian Movement. It's a transnational movement largely based in Europe, but there have been groups also here based in the United States that are promoting this idea of remigration as a solution to the great replacement. And Jimenez, I want to talk about what this looks like in practice here in the U.S. We've heard a lot about the Trump administration stepping up deportations. You've also reported on the administration's efforts to get folks to self-deport is the terminology we've heard.

What does that look like? Yeah, this administration really quickly early on launched a big campaign urging immigrants to, quote-unquote, self-deport. So we've seen a huge ad campaign that you may have seen on television or even streaming services. They took an application that was originally used to schedule asylum appointments, and they made it a way for people to say that they were voluntarily leaving the country, they created monetary incentives for, you know, people who are here without legal status and their family members to leave and go back essentially to their country of origin. It's really unclear, though, you know, how many people have done this. And the Department of Homeland Security has produced

some numbers, but, you know, it's unclear, you know, if those are people who were in detention and opted to voluntarily depart, which was already an option for those who were in detention, you know, how much money has actually been paid out, you know, what actually has been the results of this broader campaign. And this is really kind of bidirectional, right? I mean, it's not just pushing people who are already here to leave. The administration is also trying to discourage immigrants who might otherwise come to the U.S. even through legal channels from doing that, right?

Yeah, I mean, it has gotten harder just starting from day. One, asylum processing was paused at the southern border. There was an immediate pause of the refugee program. Those are just two of the ways that people could immigrate legally into the United States. And that was pretty much stopped from the start. And then most recently, after the shooting of two National Guards members allegedly by an Afghan national, there was a very sweeping pause on the processing of immigration applications from people who are on a list of 19 countries. that have limits on travel to the United States. So, you know, there are recent reports since then

that people showed up to their naturalization ceremonies and were told to leave. There are reports of people being detained even prior to this shooting at Green Card interviews. And lawyers have told me that this has broadly created a chilling effect on those who are looking to seek more permanent status and even those who are considering coming to the United States at all. So at least in practice, the administration is clearly put. pushing immigrants not to come, pushing them in many cases to go back to their countries of origin. Odette, how explicitly is the administration actually employing these white nationalist-associated terms like remigration? Very explicitly. We saw that the day after an Afghan national allegedly shot two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., President Trump posted something to truth social, calling for reverse migration.

You know, we've also seen in the reorganization plans for the State Department a proposed office of remigration. And then I think the place where we've seen this most explicitly has been from some of the social media messaging from the Department of Homeland Security. You know, back in October, they tweeted just the word remigrate, period. And then just last month in November, they, you know, tweeted again, the stakes. have never been higher and the goal has never been more clear remigration now. So it's been, from my perspective, having learned about this term by interviewing white nationalists that have been part of the Identitarian Movement and learned the term remigration from them, it has been quite jarring, actually, to see that terminology pop up in the feeds of U.S. federal agencies and

officials. Tightening immigration has been a focus for Trump, you know, since he first ran for president back in 2016. But, but this language is new, isn't it? I mean, there has been, you know, going back to the first Trump administration, a push to try and imply that, you know, there are certain kinds of immigrants that are welcome in the United States. You know, the idea that the United States is not a nation of immigrants. It's a nation of citizens that, you know, has some of its roots within the first Trump administration. This time around, we are seeing it be a lot more forward in terms of rhetoric and policy. So one great example of that is many policy members I've read coming out of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is a part of DHS, talks about wanting to bring in

people who can easily assimilate into the country. And they use those words. And those words have been said by State Department officials, DHS officials. One example of policy is the refugee resettlement program when the Trump administration opened that up but to allow white South Africans to seek refuge in the United States. And they did make the point that these people could easily assimilate into the country. So that's one example. What criteria, if any, has the administration identified for sort of how they evaluate who they think can assimilate and who can't? That's a good question. It's not explicitly clear. You know, of spoken with many asylum officers and refugee officers who say that they have not gotten any

exact training or directives on how exactly they're supposed to make this kind of discretion, because it is a discretion that an individual person reviewing an application is going to be making and is going to be looking at. But at the same time, you know, immigration lawyers and advocates tell me that it does seem a little clear that this administration is blocking away, you know, some of the poorest countries, some of the most war-torn countries, you know, countries that happen to be, you know, not majority white from coming to the United States. And then a very crafted, created program for people who are white to come in. All right. We're going to take a quick break. We'll have more in just a moment. This message comes from Wise, the app for using

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So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back. We've been talking about the Trump administration's focus on what's known as remigration. Hemingham, and we talked about the fact that the administration is welcoming white South Africans. What groups of immigrants is the administration targeting with these policies of remigration? We have seen a particular focus on those 19 countries that are on a travel ban list. that restricts their, you know, travel into the United States to some degree.

A majority of those countries are in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And now a lot of their, you know, asylum applications, a lot of their green card applications and citizenship applications are currently on pause. And then any avenue that they would have had to come into the country is essentially also on pause as well. So those countries are particularly targeted, right? now. The terms remigration or reverse migration have gone hand in hand with some other terminology that we've heard from this administration, talking about the importance of Western values, Western civilization. We heard Vice President J.D. Vance sort of chiding European leaders for allowing their countries to suffer to, quote, civilizational suicide. We saw in the national security

strategy that the White House released last week, reference to, quote, civilizational erasure. And that is terminology that also sits within this white nationalist movement that I mentioned, you know, this identitarian movement in Europe. And so there is this sort of fixation on the Western European nations as the ones that are at risk of being sort of reverse colonized is the way that it's been put within these movements by people of color and that there's sort of this existential urgency to preserve their essence by removing those people. Odette, I also want to talk about the timing of some of the messages we're hearing from President Trump and the administration.

Jimenez mentioned a moment ago the shooting late last month of two National Guard members, allegedly by an Afghan immigrant. Trump made several statements after that denigrating Afghan immigrants, including announcing that the U.S. would reexamine all of those already in the country. So I'm wondering, how do events like that shooting affect Trump's efforts to advance these ideas of remigration? Yeah. And, you know, if you even rewind further back, you'll recall that that list of 19 countries really came about in the aftermath of an attack by an Egyptian national. on a group of people that were holding a vigil for the Israeli victims of the Hamas October 7th attack. And so there seems to be this connection between these kind of attacks that happen on U.S. soil and then a tightening around immigration policy. And that is somewhat similar to the way that the Identitarian Movement ended up pushing its idea more into the mainstream in European countries.

Over there, that movement has staged events that were meant to create uncertainty among the native population there, feelings of fear. For example, the Identitarian Movement staged sort of like a mock beheading of someone in V. Vienna, as though it had been done by ISIS, in order to sort of create uncertainty and fear over demographic changes that are happening in some of these European countries with more migrants entering those countries. And with that fear and uncertainty, it sort of opens the possibility that people will be open to ideas like remigration that had previously fallen and outside the range of policy that most of those societies were open to. Now, Heman, you have been reporting all year about the administration's immigration policy.

Big picture, what's the most significant change you're seeing in not just the rhetoric, but the government's approach? Well, the biggest change is definitely the turning to these legal forms of migration and even going as far back and threatening to strip status broadly from anyone that was admitted into the country legally by the last administration. You know, that is very, very sweeping, very deep and also very confusing. You know, a lot of people don't know exactly how these revets and reopenings of cases are going to go down. I can't really remember a time in which people were pulled out in this way from naturalization ceremonies and that their cases this far back were

reopened just simply based on their nationality, not because there was a crime that was committed or any other investigation into their application that may have had to do with fraud or anything like that. And then second, you know, definitely the use of, you know, the three immigration enforcement agencies in the way that they are being used. broader sweeping authority on customs and border protection. And then we're seeing the U.S. citizenship and immigration services begin to step into this more almost policing mindset as well. DHS announced that there were going to be two new positions at USC. Homeland Defenders and Special Agents, and it's really unclear what these positions are going to do. Some of these positions are going to be authorized to carry firearms, as well as provide direct

support to border protection and ice, which is not something that USCIS has directly done before. They are the ones you go to when you're like, hey, I want to apply for a green card. They're not a place you go and you think that there's a risk that you're going to get. arrested, detained, and deported. At the beginning, we talked about the fact that this idea of remigration traces its roots to the far right in Europe. Why are these connections important for Americans to understand? They're important to understand because they really reveal the transnational nature of these extreme movements. And so it's quite interesting to see that while the idea originated in

Europe, identitarian leaders in Europe are now looking at what's happening in the U.S. with the operationalization of these kind of immigration crackdowns that we have seen in many urban centers. You know, I've covered what's happened, for example, in Chicago. They were looking at that as the model of what European countries can do as well. And that is something we will ask the two of you to continue watching as we go forward. All right, we're going to leave. leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Jimana Bustia and I cover immigration policy. And I'm Odette Youssef. I cover domestic extremism. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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