Trump’s calls for “remigration,” a form of ethnic cleansing, echo Nick Fuentes’ calls to roll back immigration

President Donald Trump and his administration have seemingly embraced a far-right immigration policy known as “remigration” — a term associated with forced migration, mass deportations, and ethnic cleansing. Statements from the administration echo white nationalist streamer and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, who has repeatedly called for a shutdown of all immigration and boasted of the right’s shift “against mass migration.”

On November 27, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover,” adding, “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation.” Trump’s latest comments come after the Department of Homeland Security publicly called for immigrants to “remigrate,” Trump’s State Department announced the opening of an “Office of Remigration” in April, and Trump pledged during his 2024 presidential campaign to “revoke deportation immunity, suspend refugee resettlement, and return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration).”

“Remigration” refers to a far-right policy that calls for “returning immigrants to their native lands in what amounts to a soft-style ethnic cleansing” by forcibly deporting non-white immigrants. According to The Washington Post, the term was popularized by far-right Austrian political activist Martin Sellner, who has called to “end the migrant invasion of America” and praised Trump for invoking the term during the 2024 presidential campaign. Some in the far right have adopted the term, often invoking the so-called “great replacement” conspiracy theory and suggesting remigration as a way maintain a white majority.

Fuentes, who has been making the rounds on a number of prominent right-leaning streaming shows with millions of views, has advocated against immigrants for years. Over that time, he has declared that “the First Amendment was not written for Muslims, by the way,” but “was intended for citizens, not for immigrants”; stated that if he were president, “tens of millions” of undocumented immigrants would “have to be returned because they have no legal standing here”; and argued that America was not designed “with a multiracial religiously pluralistic society in mind” and until the 1960s it was “almost all white, all Christian.”

Fuentes has also celebrated right-wing media figures and politicians who have embraced the idea of an end to all immigration or even remigration, boasting in June that “I’ve never seen the right wing so angry and so explicitly against mass migration, so close to expressing their disdain in racial terms.” He added: “I’ve noticed people like Charlie Kirk and Matt Walsh are now calling for an immigration moratorium. That means they want to shut down all immigration. And suffice to say, the groypers have won. It’s just not even a question at this point.”