U.S. anti-immigrant organizations tied to white nationalist John Tanton’s network have expanded their presence in Europe through a growing web of partnerships, events, and fellowships. Hungary, through Orbán-linked institutions, has served as a key gateway for CIS, NumbersUSA, and FAIR. But the network’s activity has increasingly spread beyond Hungary, reaching France, Spain, Serbia, and Slovakia.
What this report tracks:
- The network is not only operating abroad; it has also helped shape U.S. immigration policy, with figures tied to CIS and NumbersUSA now holding senior roles at DHS.
- Orbán-linked institutions in Hungary have provided the infrastructure for the network’s European expansion by organizing conferences, supporting joint policy work, and funding American organizations.
- In France, the Observatoire de l’immigration et de la démographie has become a key bridge for the network, amplifying anti-immigrant claims through policy reports, media appearances, and events held in parliamentary spaces.
Three U.S. anti-immigrant organizations tied to John Tanton’s network, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), NumbersUSA, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), have expanded their reach into Europe. Since 2022, the groups have built ties with former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán-linked institutions in Hungary through events, conferences, and panels. More recently, their footprint has extended beyond Hungary, with representatives appearing at events in Serbia, Slovakia, and France.
The American organizations have also cultivated allies in several European countries. In France, they have developed ties with the Observatoire de l’immigration et de la démographie, an organization that provides anti-migrant narratives and policy resources to the French far right.
John Tanton was a white nationalist who created a group of anti-immigrant organizations founded and funded over decades by the Michigan ophthalmologist. Tanton came to see immigrants as a threat to American society and culture and, sharing similar views, consorted with white nationalists. The network includes the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA, among others.
The most active of these groups abroad has been CIS, led by Mark Krikorian. CIS has a history of spreading hate against immigrants, republishing tracts by white nationalist and antisemitic authors and pushing for punishing anti-immigrant policies. In April 2026, Krikorian joined the Restoring Order podcast for a lengthy interview with American white supremacist Patrick Casey, former leader of the American Identity Movement.
Shaping Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Agenda
Krikorian’s organization has also had influence on Trump’s immigration agenda. During the president’s first term, white nationalist Stephen Miller, then senior adviser, repeatedly cited CIS research to back administration immigration policies.
In Trump’s second term, Miller returned to the White House as Homeland Security advisor and deputy chief of staff. There, he helped implement an aggressive anti-immigration agenda centered on mass deportations, shutting down the border, and dismantling the U.S. asylum and refugee systems.
Together, these policies have helped push the language of “remigration” into official government discourse. The white supremacist concept, promoted through official Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and State Department channels, refers to the forced removal of immigrants, refugees and their descendants — including legal residents and citizens — based on race, ethnicity, culture, being perceived as “non-white,” or a failure to “assimilate.” The State Department has even proposed formalizing the concept through an “Office of Remigration.”
“It’s Do everything all at once everywhere,” Krikorian told The Atlantic in March 2025, summing up Miller’s anti-immigrant strategy. The magazine identified CIS as a group aligned with Miller that had “incubated some of his policy ideas.”
Stephen Miller amplified information from the Center for Immigration Studies on X in 2022. (Source: X).
That influence was not limited to Miller. CIS was part of a broader policy program for Trump’s second-term immigration agenda. The organization was a partner of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s rights-stripping initiative that called for the rounding up and deportation of immigrants in the U.S., among other harsh anti-immigrant policies. CIS later acknowledged its role in shaping the agenda, saying on its website that, during the campaign, it had provided “extensive background and analysis.”
The Tanton network has helped shape Trump’s immigration agenda through both ideas and personnel. Several figures tied to its organizations have taken roles inside DHS: Jon Feere, a former CIS official, has served since January 2025 as senior adviser to the director of ICE; Todd Bensman, another former CIS analyst and one of the network’s most internationally active figures, is now a senior adviser at DHS; and Eric Ruark, NumbersUSA’s former director of research and former director of policy at FAIR, serves as assistant secretary for border security and immigration.
Hungary as a Gateway to Europe
Before moving into the Trump administration, Bensman and Ruark were already connected to anti-immigrant organizations in Europe. A turning point in the internationalization of these U.S. groups came in November 2023, when anti-immigrant institutions from the U.S., Hungary, France and Israel announced the formation of the International Network for Immigration Research (INIR), a new body designed to bring together similar organizations across the Atlantic.
In its founding principles, INIR presents itself as a tool to “combat” what it describes as a “pro-immigration imbalance.”
Its initial members included the France-based Observatoire de l’immigration et de la démographie (Immigration and Demography Observatory, OID), CIS, NumbersUSA, Migration Research Institute (MRI), and the Israeli Immigration Policy Center, all known for favoring anti-immigrant policies. FAIR later joined the network in 2024.
Asylum policy quickly emerged as one of the network’s shared priorities. Ruark had pointed to “the abuse of our asylum systems and the need for reform” as a shared concern within the network. At one of INIR’s first events, held in Washington, D.C., in 2024, Krikorian went further, saying that “the only way to get a handle on this is to end asylum as it currently exists.”
Viktor Marsai, director of the Budapest-based Migration Research Institute, shared a photo of the deportations panel on X. (Source: X)
The titles of some events organized by members of the network offer a clear indication of its political agenda. In April 2026, INIR held a panel titled “Can Democracies Deport Millions?” featuring representatives from CIS, MRI, FAIR, and NumbersUSA.
At the event, Krikorian claimed that “almost every adult illegal alien is by definition a criminal,” attempting to justify the statement by citing not only unlawful border crossings, but also “identity theft, tax fraud, perjury” and failure to depart after a removal order. He also called for pressuring undocumented immigrants to leave by making them “unemployable,” “un-bankable,” “un-licensable” and “un-IDable.”
Since at least 2019, European and American organizations in this network have collaborated closely. That year, Todd Bensman, then a CIS analyst, traveled to Hungary, where he visited the border and met with several Orbán administration officials. Two months later, he was an invited speaker at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Budapest Summit on Migration.
The pro-Orbán, propaganda outfit Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) has served as a key gateway for American anti-immigrant organizations expanding their networks in Europe. MCC was one of the institutions behind the launch of the Migration Research Institute, and it has repeatedly hosted figures from CIS, NumbersUSA, and FAIR at its events and facilities.
In March 2026, Krikorian appeared in Budapest on a panel titled “Reclaiming Our Demos: Borders or Oblivion for Europe’s Cultural Future,” alongside other INIR-linked figures. In November 2025, CIS and FAIR staffers participated in a summit organized in Szeged (Hungary) to mark the 10th anniversary of what organizers called “the European migration crisis,” alongside John Rouse, a senior adviser at the State Department, and Simon Hankinson, a Heritage Foundation senior research fellow. In August 2025, representatives of the American organizations also attended the MCC Feszt in Esztergom (Hungary). All three events were organized by MCC.
Representatives of the INIR network at MCC Feszt in Esztergom (Hungary) in August 2025, including from the left Mark Krikorian (CIS), Jim Robb (NumbersUSA), Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti (OID), Yonatan Jakubowicz (Israeli Immigration Policy Center), and Viktor Marsai (MRI). (Source: INIR website).
But MCC has not limited those collaborations to Hungary. In March 2025, Krikorian was listed as a speaker at a conference in Bratislava (Slovakia). That November, Ruark, identified in the program at the time as FAIR’s political director, participated in an event in Subotica (Serbia).
The partnership has moved beyond panels and conferences. The groups have collaborated on policy papers. Krikorian wrote the foreword to a report published by MCC, MRI and the Polish anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ+ think tank Ordo Iuris. The report, titled Taking Back Control from Brussels: The Renationalization of European Union (EU) Migration and Asylum Policies, argues that migration policy should be returned from the EU to national governments. In the foreword, Krikorian praised the Trump administration for “aggressively” using administrative measures to “restore control over immigration.” He went on to describe the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum as “a failure.”
The translatlantic anti-immigrant network strengthened by organizations linked to Hungarian conservative institutions follow a pattern similar to anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ+ movements. MCC and Danube Institute, both linked to Orbán’s political ecosystem, have hosted international speakers at events focused on pronatalist policies, abortion, and LGBTQ+ rights.
The American anti-immigrant groups have also benefited from Hungarian state-linked funding. The Hungary Foundation, a U.S.-based organization established by Orbán’s government, had given at least $356,950 to CIS, according to the foundation’s IRS Form 990 tax. The Fidesz leader is no longer Hungary’s prime minister after a massive loss in Hungary’s April 2026 election.
People connected to the network have also moved between its member organizations, especially between Hungarian and American institutions. Bensman served as a visiting fellow at the MRI. Viktor Marsai, the Hungarian institute’s director, completed a research fellowship at CIS in 2023. His colleague Kristóf György Veres, international director at the Danube Institute and former researcher at MRI, worked as a fellow at CIS headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 2021.
From Washington Think Tanks to the French Senate
Another transatlantic fellowship helped export the model to France. In 2019, Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti, co-founder and director of the OID, participated in the Bourse Tocqueville (Tocqueville Fellowship), a French program that each year brings a group of young conservative professionals to Washington, D.C., for a two-week immersion in the American political and think tank ecosystem.
Pouvreau-Monti later said the Tocqueville Fellowship had a “decisive impact” on his professional life, and identified CIS and NumbersUSA as among the most useful contacts he made during the program.
OID produces policy reports and statistics that feed anti-immigrant narratives in France. The observatory is known for promoting dubious statistics that claimed the “net annual cost” of migration to France is upwards of “35 to 40 billion euros,” which the authors present as a “structural burden that calls for a 180-degree … turn in migration policy.” That view was amplified by National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN) leader Jordan Bardella, who cited the figure during the European election campaign. In the same period, far-right MEP Marion Maréchal also relied on OID material.
“The OID is still primarily invited onto [French] media outlets that seek to promote anti-immigration messages. And Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti benefits from the ecosystem of the reactionary billionaire Vincent Bolloré, who owns newspapers, TV channels, as well as a publishing house that released his first essay and retail outlets where this book will certainly be prominently displayed,” Anne-Sophie Simpere, a journalist at Observatoire des multinationales (Multinationals Observatory), a French online investigative media outlet that has reported on the connections between OID and American anti-immigration organizations, told GPAHE.
But Simpere explained that OID’s reach extends beyond the “traditional spheres of the far right.” Its founders have access “to politicians ranging from the far right all the way to the government and Parliament, where they have been repeatedly invited to testify.”
OID members are also invited by “less partisan media,” she added, which “likely believe they are balancing the debate by inviting ‘anti-immigration’ voices, and the OID members come across as respectable.”
OID’s tweet about the event held at the French National Assembly. (Source: X)
By November 2024, OID and its international allies had gained further access to France’s political institutions. To mark the first anniversary of INIR, the transatlantic network organized two events in French parliamentary spaces. The events featured two American anti-immigration figures: Mark Krikorian of CIS and Eric Ruark, who was then with NumbersUSA and now at DHS.
One conference was focused on the alleged economic and fiscal impact of immigration. Another, titled “Europe, the United States, and the Asylum Crisis”, took place at the French Senate and was co-sponsored by the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies in Brussels, the official think tank of the European People’s Party, the main right-wing political grouping in the European Parliament.
Although the OID presents itself as an observatory grounded in scientific rigor, French media have described it as an anti-migration think tank that is “in no way scientific.” In 2021, the organization openly defended the thesis of the white nationalist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory in the far-right magazine Causeur, under the headline “The great replacement is now!”
According to Anne-Sophie Simpere, OID resembles CIS in “its way to present itself as a ‘nonpartisan’ institute that provides fact-based work rather than ideology—which is highly misleading but allows it to pass off biased anti-immigration messages as research findings.”
Screenshot of INIR’s listed member organizations and affiliated contributors. (Source: INIR website).
The network’s European footprint extends beyond France’s OID and Hungary’s Migration Research Institute. INIR also lists several Europe-based “affiliated contributors,” including Dutch researcher Dr. Jan van de Beek, founder of Demo-demo.nl; Juan Ángel Soto, founder and CEO of the Spanish consulting firm Fortius; Michèle Tribalat, a former director of research at the French Institute of Demographic Studies (INED); and Nick Zangwill, a philosopher and Honorary Research Fellow at University College London.
The Network’s Spanish Connection
In Spain, Soto is connected to the Instituto Español de Análisis Migratorio (Spanish Institute for Migration Analysis, IEAM), a new migration-focused think tank launched through Fundación Fortius (Fortius Foundation), the foundation he chairs.
Although Soto does not appear as a board member of the institute, his biography in the Spanish media outlet The Objective, where he publishes op-eds, describes him as one of the figures behind the initiative.
LinkedIn post by Juan Ángel Soto announcing the launch event of the Instituto Español de Análisis Migratorios at the European Parliament’s offices in Spain. (Source: Linkedin)
From 2021 to 2023, he served as the international director of Fundación Disenso (Disenso Foundation), a think tank launched by Spain’s far-right Vox party. He is also currently a visiting fellow at the Budapest-based Danube Institute, an organization that was part of the propaganda arm of Orbán’s regime.
Soto has also participated in the Hungary-linked network of organizations focused on migration policy. In May 2024, he appeared in Budapest alongside Krikorian and Viktor Marsai, executive director of the MRI, on a panel linking migration debates in the American and the European elections
In September 2025, Soto also took part in a conference in Serbia, organized by MCC, where he shared a panel with Ruark. According to MCC’s write-up of the event, Soto argued that “excessive immigration” in Western European cities had led to “demographic and security concerns”, claiming that “native populations” had become a “minority” and that crime had “soared.”
The Spanish institute has already gained a degree of institutional visibility. In April, it held its launch event at the European Parliament’s offices in Spain.
The American anti-immigrant network’s expansion is no longer centered on Hungary alone. It is developing new footholds in other European countries, a potentially valuable shift for the U.S. organizations following the fall of Orbán’s government.
