The Department of Homeland Security set off a political firestorm Tuesday after posting a single word from its official X account: “Remigrate.”
It didn’t take long for critics to accuse the Trump administration of openly endorsing a term steeped in racist, far-right ideology—one that has long been tied to the forced removal of immigrants and ethnic minorities.
“Yet further evidence that the DHS [X] account in particular is run by wannabe Nazis,” wrote British journalist and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan.
The term remigration isn’t new. It gained traction in post-war Europe as part of ethno-nationalist movements calling for the mass expulsion of migrants. More recently, it’s been adopted by the far-right across Europe, particularly by figures like Austrian activist Martin Sellner, a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi who’s made remigration a cornerstone of his ideology.
Jose Angel Maldonado, a professor at the University of South Florida, has described the concept as “a soft type of ethnic cleansing under the guise of deportation and segregation.”
It wasn’t just the word that sparked outrage—it was where it came from. The DHS is a government agency. This wasn’t some fringe account or anonymous troll spewing white nationalist rhetoric. It was the official voice of a federal department, under an administration that’s already been criticized for embracing extremist language.
“This official government account would appear to be run by far-right trolls deliberately trying to provoke a response by using a term openly associated with ethnic cleansing,” wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “They will likely attack anyone who points this out and express faux-outrage at the suggestion.”
And critics aren’t buying the idea that it was accidental or harmless. The timing of the post raised even more eyebrows—coming the same day a report surfaced exposing a private group chat involving Young Republican leaders, where members were caught praising Adolf Hitler. At least one participant in that chat currently works in the Trump administration.
This isn’t an isolated case. In June, Trump himself called for the mass “remigration” of all undocumented immigrants—a statement that was widely condemned as both unrealistic and openly xenophobic. A month earlier, his State Department floated the idea of creating an “Office of Remigration,” a move that immigration experts and civil rights groups said was a thinly veiled attempt to normalize mass deportations.
The messaging—and the people pushing it—are not subtle. The use of remigration is part of a growing pattern of mainstreaming language that was once relegated to white supremacist forums. Whether by design or sheer recklessness, the Trump administration continues to blur the line between nationalist dog-whistles and outright hate speech.
This time, it’s not coming from a rally stage or an anonymous burner account. It’s coming straight from a U.S. government agency.
