State Department could have an 'Office of Remigration': What is it?
State Department could have an 'Office of Remigration': What is it?
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Marco Rubio defends immigration actions to lawmakers
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was grilled by lawmakers over his implementation of immigration policies.
The Trump administration last week formally notified Congress of its plans for a sweeping reorganization of the State Department, which could include the establishment of an office focused on returning migrants living in the U.S. to their countries of origin.
It is one of several overhauls spearheaded by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as he marches forward with a broad reorganization of the State Department, first announced in April. It would also include a cut to thousands of jobs, refocus the agency's human rights bureau on "Western values" and either restructure or eliminate 300 of the department's 734 bureaus and offices, according to Reuters' review of the May 29 congressional notification.
In a statement the day of the notification's release to Congress, Rubio said the plan will result in a more "agile" State Department, which will scale back a department he said had grown in terms of bureaucracy and costs without delivering results.
"The plan submitted to Congress was the result of thoughtful and deliberative work by senior department leadership," he said. "We have taken into account feedback from lawmakers, bureaus, and long-serving employees."
Rubio didn't mention the Office of Remigration in his statement, and the office is not listed on a new chart on the department's website. However, reporting from CNN and Axios say there is a proposal within a more detailed notification for an "Office of Remigration," with both outlets independently reporting that it is described as a "hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking."
The proposed office would be one of three new "functional offices" formed from the existing Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, the outlets reported, all consolidated under a (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State) for Migration Matters. The three new offices are to "actively facilitate the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin or legal status," according to the reporting.
What is the term 'remigration'?
The proposed name draws on a term increasingly associated in Europe with the far-right and the rise in ethnonationalist immigration attitudes, especially in Germany and Austria, that calls for mass deportation of primarily non-white immigrants. It has become a shorthand to refer to policy proposals triumphed by some European right-wing parties, extremists and neo-Nazi activists that call for forceful mass deportation of migrants.
It attracted buzz in 2023 after a jury of German linguists named in "non-word" of the year in its annual ranking of misleading or inappropriate words that are used to discriminate or gloss over issues. While it has become a euphemism for forced repatriation in several Western and Central European countries, it is a largely unfamiliar term in the American political lexicon.
In the final weeks of his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump used the term remigration in a post to the social media site X.
"As President I will immediately end the migrant invasion of America. We will stop all migrant flights, end all illegal entries, terminate the Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals (CBP One App), revoke deportation immunity, suspend refugee resettlement, and return Kamala's illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration)," he said in the post.
Contributing: Reuters
Kathryn Palmer is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her at kapalmer@usatoday.com and on X @KathrynPlmr.
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is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy,, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here. 'The global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy. Rather, it is trampling democracy,' a State Department employee wrote on Substack. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images Last week, the State Department published a strikingly radical screed on its official Substack. Titled 'The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe,' the piece accused Europe's governments of waging 'an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself.' These Western nations, according to author Samuel Samson, have turned on their own heritage: abandoning democracy in favor of a repressive liberalism that threatens to snuff out the heart of their own civilization. 'The global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy. Rather, it is trampling democracy, and Western heritage along with it, in the name of a decadent governing class afraid of its own people,' Samson writes. Samson asserts that German and French criminal investigations into far-right factions are politically motivated repression, but provides no evidence to support this extraordinary claim about the internal politics of key allies. He inflates the (real) problems with free speech law in Britain, while whitewashing the only authoritarian state in the European Union (right-wing Hungary). He presents a bizarre intellectual history of the Declaration of Independence, replacing Jefferson's chief influences (Enlightenment liberals) with Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. The essay isn't just poorly argued: It has policy implications. Samson both insults and threatens allied governments, implying there will be some kind of US punishment if European states do not change their policies on free speech, election administration, and (for some reason) migration. 'Secretary Rubio has made clear that the State Department will always act in America's national interest. Europe's democratic backsliding not only impacts European citizens but increasingly affects American security and economic ties, along with the free speech rights of American citizens and companies,' he writes. 'We will not always agree on scope and tactics, but tangible actions by European governments to guarantee protection for political and religious speech, secure borders, and fair elections would serve as welcome steps forward.' Samuel Samson's title is 'Senior Advisor for the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor,' but he is not an experienced diplomat. 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Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. 'The vast bureaucracy created by liberalism in pursuit of a mirage of depoliticized governance may, by the invisible hand of Providence, be turned to new ends, becoming the great instrument with which to restore a substantive politics of the good,' Vermeule wrote in a 2018 essay. These arguments helped make Vermeuele a leading voice in the so-called postliberal movement: a loose group of right-wing religious conservatives who shared his radical critique of our current political institutions (if not his integralist solution). Postliberal ideas became particularly popular among young conservatives, who felt that the pre-Trump conservative consensus was exhausted and out of date. Samuel Samson was one of them. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 2021, he took a one-year junior fellowship at the Thomistic Institute — a Catholic think tank in Washington, DC, associated with the Dominican order of monks. During that fellowship, he penned a piece for the American Spectator in which he endorsed Vermeule's strategy for taking liberalism down. Calling Vermeuele's ideas 'the popular blueprint for America's burgeoning post-liberal right,' Samson wrote that 'I believe the offensive strategy is…worth our effort.' His concern, however, is that the strategy risks corruption: that young bureaucrats and Hill staffers residing in Washington will be corrupted by living in a place defined by liberal values. 'The strategy's offensive nature requires its agents to dwell for extended periods, even lifetimes, within the nucleus of American liberalism,' he writes. 'As such, the strategy brings agents into full contact with the temptations of liberalism — sirens singing alluring songs of pleasure, sexual license, material gain, power, prestige, and social inclusion — beckoning the agent to direct the project to new, less-wholesome ends.' It is a sign that a truly radical ideological movement has begun successfully executing on its stated strategy for entering the political mainstream. Samson's solution to this danger is for radical entryists to engage in study. 'Read great books of the Western, Christian, and Classical traditions — as well as those that oppose them,' he writes. 'Yes, the practical skills of networking, legislating, and orating are important too, but detached from speculative truth, they are all functionally worthless.' Somewhat ironically, Samson's next move was to become a fundraiser. But the organization he would work for, American Moment, was one that Samson believed furthered the Vermeule mission. 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