“The American people voted for mass deportations. They’re getting mass communications instead.”
That was the Heritage Foundation’s verdict on Donald Trump’s deportation record. Within a week, Trump would respond by aligning the United States government with the deportation agenda of European neo-Nazis, legitimizing white nationalist ideology as official policy in language that had American extremists celebrating Thanksgiving a day late.
The Heritage Foundation typically does not issue public rebukes of this president. But on November 21, Mike Howell — a visiting fellow who helped draft Project 2025 and runs the foundation’s Oversight Project — issued a report card grading Trump’s deportation efforts. The mark: C-minus.
Howell knew his audience. Trump has built a political identity on superlatives — the biggest rallies, the greatest economy, achievements “like nobody has ever seen.” In his report, Howell cited Dwight Eisenhower’s 1954 deportation operation, which Trump had promised to surpass during his 2024 campaign.
The numbers were unsparing. Eisenhower removed 31 percent of the undocumented population, Howell pointed out. Trump, through November 2025, had managed just 4.2 percent. It was a critique calibrated to sting — not by attacking Trump’s policies, but by measuring him against his own boasts.
The problem, Howell argued, was that Trump had confined himself to deporting criminals — the same approach taken by Clinton, Obama, and Biden. The fix: abandon prioritization entirely. Deport “people who are deportable for any reason.”
Five days later, Rahmanullah Lakanwal shot two National Guard members patrolling near the White House.
Trump spent Thanksgiving composing his response—a Truth Social diatribe that marked a decisive break, formally adopting the deportation vocabulary of European neo-Nazi movements as official U.S. policy.
Trump announced a “permanent pause” on migration from “Third World Countries.” He pledged to remove anyone “not a net asset” or “incapable of loving our Country.” Without citing evidence, he claimed most of the 53 million foreign-born U.S. residents were welfare recipients, prisoners, or gang members. He attacked Somalis for “taking over” Minnesota, described Representative Ilhan Omar as “always wrapped in her swaddling hijab,” and called Governor Tim Walz “seriously retarded.”
Then came a phrase that had never appeared in official American government communications: “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation.”
The White House called it “one of the most important messages ever released by President Trump.”
The Department of Homeland Security posted its own declaration on X: “The stakes have never been higher, and the goal has never been more clear: Remigration now.” The post drew 7.7 million views. A follow-up encouraged citizens to “help arrest” undocumented immigrants and linked to ICE recruitment.
“Remigration” did not originate in Washington.
The term belongs to Martin Sellner, an Austrian activist whose youth included membership in Stolz und Frei — Proud and Free — a neo-Nazi group. He once affixed a swastika poster to a synagogue. His mentor, Gottfried Küssel, served two prison terms for Nazi revivalism. Sellner rebranded. He now calls himself an “Identitarian” and has been the de facto head of Generation Identity, a pan-European movement that has been banned in multiple places. He promotes the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory and frames remigration as a 30-year project to make Western nations “European again.”
In 2019, the man who murdered 51 people at two Christchurch mosques donated money to Sellner’s movement and exchanged emails with him. Sellner has not been able to legally enter the United States since the Christchurch massacre. Last November, he addressed an American Renaissance conference — a white nationalist gathering in Tennessee — by video.
When Trump’s post appeared, Sellner celebrated. When DHS echoed the language, he celebrated again, calling it vindication and crediting Trump with taking the term global.
On Meet the Press Sunday, host Kristen Welker asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem directly about Remigration: “This term has been used by the far right in Europe to call for the mass deportation of non-white immigrants. How specifically does the Trump administration define remigration?”
Noem dodged the question and instead talked about criminals.
Border czar Tom Homan was less evasive. On Fox News that morning, he predicted that most migrants from developing nations would face deportation because the government cannot confirm their backgrounds. “These Third World nations, they don’t have systems like we do,” he said. “I really, truly think that most of them are going to end up being deported because we’re not going to be able to properly vet them.”
More than 190,000 Afghans have resettled in the United States since August 2021. Most worked alongside American forces as interpreters, translators, drivers, and fighters. Had they stayed in Afghanistan, they would have faced Taliban persecution or execution.
On November 28, the State Department, which has proposed creating an Office of Remigration, froze visa issuance for Afghan passport holders. USCIS halted all asylum decisions. DHS stopped processing immigration requests for Afghan nationals indefinitely.
Heritage’s Howell had issued his challenge. The shooting gave Trump his opening. And the president spent Thanksgiving answering — in language lifted from Europe’s white nationalist movements, handing extremists on both sides of the Atlantic a dangerous victory that signals a darker turn for American immigration policy.
