The news broke on May 29, when Axios, Wired, and The Handbasket reported on the massive restructuring operation, including the planned creation of the new Office of Remigration. All three outlets provided accurate context for the term “remigration.” 

• Axios wrote that “liberal and moderate critics in Europe say ‘remigration’ has historically been used as a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.” 
• Wired wrote that “remigration” is a policy “with the goal of creating white ethnostates in Western countries.” 
• The Handbasket’s subheadline informed readers that the “concept of remigration has explicitly neo-Nazi roots and has been popularized in Europe.” 

CNN also reported on the reorganization effort on May 29, including the new Office of Remigration, but provided no context about the term’s history. Reuters reported on the reorganization, but its coverage didn’t include the term “remigration.” 

Some outlets that followed up on the initial reporting conveyed the extremist history behind the new office’s name, including Mother Jones, HuffPost, and Truthout.

But the vast majority of legacy media outlets ignored the news. 

MSNBC and Fox News failed to cover the new “remigration” office, and CNN made just a brief mention of the reporting on May 29. ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press each failed to cover the new office as well. Additionally, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal all failed to cover the new office in both their print and online versions, while USA Today published an online article explaining the historical use of the word by the far-right.

This isn’t the first time that legacy media has largely ignored President Donald Trump’s interest in so-called remigration. In September 2024, Trump posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he pledged to “return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration).”

A Media Matters study from the time found “national news media largely failed to cover Trump's social media post calling to implement ‘remigration.’” 

Remigration has become a signature issue and term among far-right activists and political parties in Europe, and has been adopted by Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) and Austria’s Freedom party (FPÖ). The term was popularized by far-right Austrian anti-immigration activist Martin Sellner, who, according to a profile in The Washington Post, “argues that each race would be happier in its own geographic corner.” In January, Sellner said he was “very happy” that Trump used the term “remigration” during the campaign. 

The Guardian reported that the term appeared to be appropriated from academia by the far-right in France “about a decade ago.” Anti-migrant extremists spread the term alongside their attempts to mainstream the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that political and financial elites — often coded as Jewish — were secretly plotting to bring millions of people from poor, nonwhite countries to the United States and Western Europe.  

According to Axios, the new Office of Remigration will be part of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration and will serve as a “hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking.” 

Wired, citing a notification sent to Congress describing the reorganization, reported that the office “‘will also actively facilitate the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin or legal status,’ which is a key aim of remigration ideology.”

Wired further notes that Trump’s restrictionist immigration agenda already closely mirrors a three-prong template laid out by Sellner. In Sellner’s first step, the goal is “stopping the invasion,” a term Trump uses regularly to describe immigration patterns, including to justify invoking an 18th century wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act. 

The second step involves deporting immigrants who entered the country with authorization “but are an economical, criminal or cultural burden,” similar to Trump’s moves to revoke Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants. 

The third step seeks to discriminate against citizens who are “non assimilated” by targeting “parallel societies with economic and cultural pressure.” Trump’s deportation operations have ensnared U.S. citizens, and he has proposed sending citizens to an El Salvadoran prison rife with human rights abuses. Sellner’s overall goal is to coerce nonwhite citizens to flee the country to allow “the wounds of multiculturalism to heal.”

The reportedly planned new Office of Remigration is the latest and perhaps most explicit move yet from the second Trump administration to pursue a white nationalist immigration policy. In just over four months, Trump has aggressively pursued his goal of deporting 1 million or more immigrants per month, moved to reinstate and expand the Muslim ban from his first term, and resettled 59 white Afrikaners while otherwise effectively closing the United States off to all other refugees, in addition to attempting to revoke TPS.

Trump has now deployed active-duty Marines and the National Guard to respond to pro-immigrant protests in Los Angeles. It’s the first time the guard has been called up against a state’s wishes since 1965. 

Mainstream coverage is all the more important as MAGA media figures escalate their xenophobic rhetoric. For instance:

• Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has advocated for suspending the writ of habeas corpus to accelerate mass deportations. 
• Over a five-week period, Fox News attacked due process for noncitizens at least 77 times. 
• Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk wrote that it’s “time to ban third world immigration, legal or illegal” and that the United States needed “a net-zero immigration moratorium with a ban on all third worlders.”
• MAGA media influencer Jack Posobiec repeated Kirk’s message that it’s “time to ban third world immigration, legal or illegal” in his own post.
• The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh made a similar comment on his podcast, arguing, “The president should use his authority to immediately terminate all migration from the Third World.”
• White nationalist Nick Fuentes celebrated that Kirk and Walsh had adopted his xenophobic posture toward immigrants. “Here we are in 2025, both of them say no more nonwhites, no more third-worlders, deport them all,” Fuentes said. 

U.S. immigration policy has long been a tool for maintaining structures of white supremacy, but Trump isn’t simply pushing on an open door. He’s adopting a suite of policies championed by extremists, in some cases whose goal is to create a white ethnostate. Legacy media outlets that are unable to see why a proposed Office of Remigration is newsworthy have failed to convey the stakes and scope of Trump’s immigration agenda. 

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original episodes of ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ Mornings, Evenings News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press as well as all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC for any of the terms “Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration,” “PRM,” or “Office of Remigration” or any variations of any of the terms “remigration,” “resettle,” or “refugee” from May 29, 2025, when news broke that the U.S. State Department intends to create an “Office of Remigration” within the department's Office of Population, Refugees, and Migration, through 10 a.m. ET June 11, 2025.

We also searched print articles in the Factiva database from the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post for the same terms  from May 29, 2025, through 10 a.m. ET June 11, 2025.

We timed segments, which we defined as instances when the U.S. State Department's intention to create an “Office of Remigration” within the department's Office of Population, Refugees, and Migration was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the new remigration office. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the new remigration office with one another.

We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned the new remigration office without another speaker in the segment engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about the new remigration office scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We rounded all times to the nearest minute.

Finally, we included print news articles, which we defined as instances when the new remigration office was mentioned in the headline or lead paragraphs of the text. We included editorial and op-eds but not letters to the editor.