By Diana Roy
On October 14, the Department of Homeland Security posted a single word on X: “remigrate.” It was a short post, but it offered a glimpse into the Donald Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda—an umbrella strategy that includes third-country deportations, curtailed humanitarian protections, and increased immigration arrests—and the scale at which the administration intends to carry it out.
That agenda began to take a clearer form earlier in May 2025, when Axios reported that the U.S. State Department was planning to create a dedicated “Office of Remigration” to help carry out Trump’s campaign promise to execute “the largest domestic deportation operation” in U.S. history. The new office would be housed within the State Department’s existing Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, and, according to the Migration Policy Institute, would be responsible for tracking repatriations and facilitating voluntary returns. However, U.S. policy on voluntary returns may violate the country’s obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, particularly if those returns are carried out under threats of deportation or other coercive measures.
Unlike immigration, which governs who is able to enter and remain in the United States, “remigration” refers to the removal or return of people already living in the country. The term carries a troubling history at the international level. Beyond its core meaning of returning home, remigration has been widely adopted by many far-right movements as a euphemism for the forced repatriation and mass deportation of non-white immigrants. The term’s revival in recent years has coincided with the rise of nationalist populist movements, which often use remigration rhetoric as part of broader opposition to multiculturalism.
The term has gained traction with major right-wing parties in Europe, including the Alternative for Germany party and the Freedom Party of Austria. “Europe has become unrecognizable,” Afroditi Latinopoulou, founder and leader of the far-right Greek political party Voice of Reason, told the European Parliament in early 2025. “Begin mass deportations immediately. Kick them out before Europe dies,” she said.
This modern usage, and the Trump administration’s adoption of the term, echoes earlier chapters of U.S. history, when immigration policy was more restrictive. In 1882, U.S. President Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for 10 years. The act was born out of anti-immigrant sentiment and economic anxiety among native-born citizens who were concerned about employment opportunities, showing how economic fears have long fueled exclusionary policy.
Decades later, President Calvin Coolidge signed into law what was the strictest immigration policy in U.S. history at the time. The Immigration Act of 1924—which reflected xenophobia and racism, concerns over rising economic inequality, and a fear of the spread of communism post–World War I—sought to preserve U.S. ethnic homogeneity by introducing a nationality-based quota system that significantly reduced the country’s foreign-born population. After the law was passed, one senator announced that “America of the melting pot comes to an end.”
The United States is also no stranger to mass deportations, evidenced by President Dwight Eisenhower’s infamous 1954 “Operation Wetback,” which aimed to root out undocumented Mexican laborers—though it also expelled many naturalized U.S. citizens.
Trump’s first term is also an example of this approach, characterized by heightened interior enforcement, family separations, deportations, restrictions on asylum, and fortification of the border wall. But his second administration is taking things further and faster, framing remigration as a practical tool for managing mass migration flows. But history also shows that such policies can create long-lasting harm. After the 1924 Immigration Act took effect, for example, immigration fell dramatically. Between 1925 and 1932, an average of roughly 124,000 people immigrated to the United States each year, compared to some 451,000 annually who had arrived between 1915 and 1924.
By 1970, five years after the law was repealed, the foreign-born percentage of the U.S. population reached an all-time low of less than 5 percent. This drop underscored how restrictive immigration policies can reshape demographics for decades, often with lasting economic and social consequences.
Trump’s remigration agenda could have similar effects. By ramping up nationwide ICE arrests, facilitating third-country deportation flights, and ending humanitarian protection for vulnerable populations, the administration risks destabilizing communities both in the United States and in the countries receiving U.S. deportees—many of which are in Latin America.
Take Haiti. Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, the country has entered a new era of insecurity, with criminal gangs capitalizing on the existing political power vacuum to expand their control nationwide. As gang violence worsens, U.S. deportations of Haitian immigrants to Haiti and an end to humanitarian protections for Haitians risk worsening instability there, further undermining U.S. efforts to bolster regional security.
The Trump administration’s immigration policies can also affect the economic stability of countries that are not already in crisis, as Haiti is, but still face certain challenges. Many countries in Central America and the Caribbean, for example, rely on money sent from family members in the United States to sustain themselves, with remittances often representing a significant portion of their gross domestic product (GDP). Due to the Trump administration’s deportation agenda, returning migrants could amplify existing economic challenges in these countries by further straining job markets and intensifying unemployment.
Conversely, in the United States, these policies can exacerbate labor shortages in critical sectors, including agriculture and healthcare, reduce economic growth, and decrease consumer spending. The Trump administration’s deportation policies have already affected the U.S. labor force, with job growth in industries heavily reliant on undocumented labor—such as the hotel and restaurant industries—lagging behind the rest of the private sector since the start of 2025.
Altogether, these effects illustrate that domestic immigration actions have the potential to reverberate far beyond U.S. borders, ultimately complicating U.S. foreign policy objectives abroad—from regional security to migration management. History shows that restrictive immigration and mass deportation policies can have significant unintended consequences. Trump’s remigration agenda risks repeating those mistakes, weakening economies and eroding the trust between the United States and countries in the region. Beyond humanitarian harm, the administration’s policies raise questions about their efficacy and long-term costs—both at home and abroad.
Diana Roy is a 2025 Rising Expert in Migration with Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. The views expressed here are those of the author.
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