The journey of the word “remigration” from secretive meetings of Europe’s fascist fringe to President Donald Trump’s social media posts reflects the growing influence of white nationalist Martin Sellner on the administration’s immigration policy.
Sellner, a native Austrian and rising star in Europe’s right-wing political circles, popularized the term “remigration” as a euphemism for the expulsion of nonwhite immigrants and native residents with a “migrant background” to their countries of origin. Germany’s Alternative Fur Deutschland and other of Europe’s far-right factions are seizing the remigration moment to push for ethnic cleansing.
Their intensifying activism is compelling even moderate politicians like the UK’s Keir Starmer to tighten immigration rules to appeal to voters on the right. However, while parliaments in Europe struggle, the Trump administration is rapidly making remigration a reality in America.
Martin Sellner, right-wing extremist from Austria, stands in front of the Erfurt Braukeller and talks to journalists. High-ranking Thuringian AfD representatives had received Sellner in the state parliament on the same day. A counter-protest has also formed against the event with him in the Braukeller. (Photo by Martin Schutt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Who is Martin Sellner?
It’s no coincidence that Sellner’s remigration plan resembles Nazi attempts to deport 4 million Jews to Madagascar in 1940. As a young man Sellner was a member of the neo-Nazi group “Stolz und Frei” (Proud and Free) and mentored by Gottfried Küssel, a twice-imprisoned “Nazi revivalist.” In 2006, Sellner himself plastered swastika stickers onto a synagogue in Baden bei Wien, Austria.
When openly identifying as a neo-Nazi became politically verboten, Sellner shifted in 2012 to promoting white supremacy and founded the white nationalist group Identitäre Bewegung Österreich, or Generation Identity, in Austria. As head of GI, Sellner organized anti-immigrant publicity stunts including chartering a boat to disrupt aid to refugees crossing the Mediterranean and throwing fake blood on refugees performing in a play at the University of Vienna. The Christchurch shooter who killed 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand corresponded with Sellner, made a visit to Austria and donated to GI.
Identitarians believe in the conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement” wherein Jewish “globalists” are thought to be replacing native-born white citizens of Europe with Muslim immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. This racist fearmongering is drawn from the pamphlet Le Grand Remplacement by French novelist Renaud Camus. Le Grand Remplacement is heavily influenced by The Camp of the Saints a repulsive work dystopian fiction and a favorite of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
In Sellner’s own book, Remigration: A Proposal, he targets three groups of people for removal: Undocumented immigrants (including refugees and those under Temporary Protected Status), legal noncitizens who may have a work visa or resident permit, and citizens who have not sufficiently “assimilated” themselves.
It is worth noting that Identitarians, like past fascists, use ambiguous language to obscure and chose the word “remigration” as a substitute for “deportation,” which they recognized carried with it memories of Nazi deportation and extermination of Jews during the Holocaust.
Sellner’s blueprint
Sellner’s blueprint for remigration is divided into three concurrent phases, each focusing on one of the target populations, and each with the potential to shift quickly from benign immigration enforcement to ethnic cleansing.
In 2024 in Saxony, a participant at a right-wing rally holds a sign reading “Martin Sellner is welcome.” (Photo by Sebastian Willnow/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Phase A, which Sellner calls the “Immediate Stabilization of Asylum Chaos,” would over a period of five years end the asylum system, impose strict border security and repatriate illegal immigrants. Those already in the country would be given an ultimatum and offered “small incentives for voluntary return.”
To reduce the overall flow of refugees, Sellner suggests countries should “cut humanitarian aid” and “stop family reunification.” Asylum seekers would be rerouted to “remigration cities” in North Africa complete with education opportunities, hospitals and sports. Immigrant advocates, he says, could join them as social workers.
Phase B focuses on “Repairing the Migration System” by curtailing admission of legal noncitizens. During this 10-year period, the government would impose immigration quotas, terminate previous naturalizations and revoke residence permits for those who are “an economic, criminal or cultural burden.”
Identitarian movements began substituting the word “culture” for “race” in the 2010s to make racism more palatable to the mainstream. Sellner proposes the creation of a demographic institute to track a population’s “ethnic composition,” crime rates, language acquisition, religious identification and social welfare benefits claims to determine which groups are contributing to the majority culture and which are not assimilating and must be repatriated.
Freedom of assembly and freedom of speech would not apply to legal noncitizens.
Phase C, which could take up to 30 years to complete, is dedicated to the “Long-Term Restoration” of white culture to allow “the wounds of multiculturalism to heal.” Key to this would be “de-Islamization” which encompasses a ban on minarets, the foreign financing of mosques, as well as an end to public recognition of Islamic holidays, religious food requirements and set times of prayer.
He projects an added bonus of ridding the electorate of the “ethnic vote,” which favors “pro-migration” parties.
During this phase, governments would expand return programs to include nonwhite citizens with “immigration histories” whose families arrived after World War II. He projects an added bonus of ridding the electorate of the “ethnic vote,” which favors “pro-migration” parties.
Collaboration with Germany’s AfD
Sellner’s greatest success in moving remigration into the mainstream has come from his collaboration with Germany’s AfD, who adopted remigration as part of their platform in 2021. Founded by Nazi apologists, the AfD is the second largest single political party in Germany and gaining seats in Parliament with campaign slogans celebrating remigration, including: “Summer, Sun, Remigration” and “Rapid Remigration Creates Living Space.”
The latter is an allusion to the Nazi philosophy of Lebensraum (“living space”) which inspired Adolf Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, and a nod to identitarians who believe each ethnic group requires its own “segregated living space.” Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified AfD as a “right-wing extremist” organization for its history of Islamophobia and the use of banned Nazi slogans by party leadership.
A testament to the close ties between the Trump administration and the AfD, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X this decision was “tyranny in disguise” and quoted AfD rhetoric in his 2026 speech to the Munich Security Conference. Earlier in February 2025, Vice President JD Vance expressed support for AfD in his own Munich Security speech and met with AfD head Alice Weidel.
In a livestream interview with Elon Musk on X, Weidel lied about her party’s Nazi association, claiming Hitler was a “communist, socialist guy.” The social media platforms X and Telegram are chiefly responsible for the dissemination of remigration into the mainstream.
A 20-person delegation from AfD traveled to the U.S. in December 2025 to meet with lawmakers and government officials. There they attended a gala held by the New York City Young Republican Club, which has a history of cozying up to far-right European parties. Several former club members with ties to AfD and Hungary — which has adopted a “zero migrant” strategy — now hold senior positions in the Trump administration.
The Young Republican Club gained notoriety for a trove of racist, antisemitic and violent Telegram chats leaked to POLITICO. When news broke of a mass shooting at a Hannukah celebration in Australia the night of the gala, the NYC club posted on X that the tragedy was “more evidence that remigration is the only path forward for Western countries.”
That same month a post on X by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that said “All America wants for Christmas is remigration” was a hit among ethnonationalists in Europe and Canada. Another DHS post on New Year’s Eve included a photo of Trump and the word “remigration.”
Much to Sellner’s delight, Trump himself posted about remigration on Truth Social, first in November 2024, saying he would “return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration),” then on June 12, 2025, claiming he was “reversing the invasion. It’s called remigration,” and once more on Thanksgiving Day 2025 posting “REVERSE MIGRATION” on Truth Social after the shooting of two National Guard members by an Afghan national. Invoking an “invasion” is a Great Replacement dog whistle.
Trump administration
Trump’s administration isn’t just posting about remigration; they’re actively following Sellner’s blueprint. What looks like a haphazard, shotgun spray of immigration laws, brute enforcement and cultural slop is a concerted effort to concentrate Sellner’s 30-year remigration plan into four. Last summer, the U.S. State Department issued a 136-page plan for the creation of an Office of Remigration that would oversee repatriation tracking, coordinate with DHS on removals and “facilitate the voluntary return of migrants.” So far, the necessary Congressional committees have not voted to approve the Office of Remigration. The administration is proceeding apace without it.
In accordance with Phase A of Sellner’s remigration plan, which calls for securing the border, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, claiming there was a “migratory invasion,” again a reference to the Great Replacement. A federal judge declared the move “unlawful.” The government also has halted refugee admissions to the United States and terminated Temporary Protected Status for individuals from several countries with varying success in the courts. While preventing immigrants and refugees from entering the U.S., ICE and CBP have been working aggressively to detain and deport undocumented immigrants.
After the debacle in Minnesota, DHS is turning away from headline grabbing — now pushing immigrants to self deport by offering $2,600 as incentive to who those who leave the U.S. willingly while simultaneously pressuring them to do so by making life in America unbearable.
So far, the necessary Congressional committees have not voted to approve the Office of Remigration. The administration is proceeding apace without it.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to deny families with undocumented members access to public or subsidized housing. This would leave 80,000 people — including 37,000 children (most of whom are American citizens) — homeless.
As a way to increase economic hardship on refugees, the Transportation Department is preventing asylum seekers from acquiring commercial driver’s licenses. DHS has gone so far as to threaten unaccompanied children in custody with lengthy detainment and criminal prosecution of their families if they do not self-deport, until ordered to desist by a federal judge in Los Angeles.
Undocumented immigrants who attempt to remain in the U.S. face deportation to Africa through the government’s “America First in Africa” program. “Blackmailed” by the withholding of a $30 million payment to a United Nations refugee program if they did not accept deportees, in January the government of Cameroon accepted 17 undocumented immigrants and is holding them in a government compound in Yaoundé, with no electricity or hot water. Two of those sent to Yaoundé have contracted malaria.
They are set to be the first of hundreds deported to 25 third countries including Cameroon, Rwanda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo despite these countries’ troubling human rights records, broken judicial systems and in the case of South Sudan, a possible civil war.
Following the second phase of Sellner’s plan, the Trump administration has pursued its removal of legal noncitizens by revoking more than 100,000 visas. According to the State Department, 8,000 of these were international student visas and 2,500 were specialized worker visas. Despite its claim that these individuals had criminal violations, the government appears to be targeting students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests and activists such as Green Card holder Mahmoud Khalil.
To reduce overall immigration, the administration has suspended visa processing for 75 countries whose citizens the State Department said on X “take welfare” at “unacceptable rates” and is refusing to process citizenship applications from 19 countries. The Trump administration is applying economic pressure on legal noncitizens by denying them access to small business loans through the federal government and cutting their limited health care benefits.
The continued rollback of multiculturalism by the Trump administration would seem home-grown racism, but it’s in line with the third phase of Sellner’s remigration plan. This is the goal of executive orders ending government diversity, equity and inclusion programs and one called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which removed references to shameful episodes from America’s past from historic sites, parks and museums. Trump and Republican lawmakers also defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for its “woke programming” and gave millions of dollars in grants through the National Endowment for the Humanities to conservative projects promoting “Western civilization.”
International connections
Anti-Islamic sentiment is spurring remigration in Europe, increasingly a component of Republican discourse in America. U.S. Reps. Chip Roy and Keith Self, along with 50 other lawmakers, are part of the Sharia Free Caucus pushing for legislation allowing for deporting any immigrant who advocates for imposing Sharia Law.
Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, who is a member of the SFC and attended the NYC Young Republican Club gala for the AfD, wrote on X, “Muslims are unable to assimilate; they all have to go back.” On X, Sellner praised Ogles’ Assimilation Act,” which would limit immigration to the U.S. from non-European countries.
While Elon Musk, who’s posted pro-remigration sentiments online, welcomed Sellner back to X in 2024, he remains banned from multiple social media platforms including Facebook, TikTok and Instagram for his white nationalist views. He also is prohibited from traveling to the U.S., the UK and several other European countries, but this hasn’t stopped him from promoting remigration.
In Potsdam, Germany, in 2023, Sellner met with wealthy businessmen, neo-Nazis and Weidel’s personal assistant to discuss remigration of nonassimilated citizens at a hotel not far from where the Third Reich plotted the systematic eradication of the Jewish people. When reports of this secret meeting leaked, 1 million Germans took to the streets to protest the remigration of fellow citizens.
Sellner spoke virtually about ethnic cleansing in 2024 to an enthusiastic crowd of Trump supporters at the white nationalist American Renaissance conference in Tennessee. He organized a Remigration Summit in May 2025 near Milan, Italy, which was attended by 300 to 400 right-wing activists and politicians, including representatives from AfD and Turning Point USA. Recently, in March 2026, The European Conservative magazine hosted Sellner and Camus at an event in Vienna to discuss remigration in Europe and the possibility of a “deportation NATO.”
To capitalize on remigration’s rising popularity, on Feb. 9 Sellner launched the Institute for Remigration, which will channel donations to influencer projects, propaganda, action movements and university projects designed to move the Overton Window on public attitudes toward remigration through a combination of controlled provocation and strategic polarization. Sellner’s new organization hopes to weaken democracy overall by questioning elections, discrediting the Constitutional Court, suppressing alternative opinions and fighting public media.
Remigration, which began as a word whispered on the margins in Europe, has returned to Europe revitalized with American aplomb. In a March plenary vote, the European Parliament voted in favor of the strict Return Regulation which human rights organizations worry could lead to the “ICE-ification” of Europe.
Kristen Thomason is a freelance writer and journalist living outside Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. She has produced educational and promotional media for national and international religious organizations and public television. Kristen also worked with local churches in Metro D.C. and Toronto, Canada. With a master’s degree in communication and undergraduate degrees in media studies and classics, she is interested in the intersection of politics, religion, history and the arts.