How Identitarian Rhetoric Is Reshaping U.S. Migration Diplomacy

COn May 11, the United States Department of State published a statement rejecting support for the Progress Declaration set by the United Nations’ International Migration Review Forum. The declaration reaffirms the 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which was negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations (UN), and outlines cooperative avenues for the safe management and protection of migrants.

The rejection was not a surprise. The first Trump administration withdrew from the Global Compact in 2017, and the current administration has continued to engage ad hoc in international cooperation on migration.

What is worth noting is the language the administration chose to justify its rejection.

In its statement, the State Department accused the UN of threatening “the future of our peoples” in the United States and across the “broader West” by facilitating “replacement immigration”; making it clear that the goal of the administration “is not to ‘manage’ migration, but to foster remigration.”

The language directly reflects identitarian ideals—a movement focused on protecting white cultural identity and history against multiculturalism and pluralism. It has long been rooted in white supremacist circles and emulated by far-right extremist groups in the United States and Europe; and it is not the first time such rhetoric has been used.

Identitarian right-wing populist rhetoric has become a staple of the new administration, with implications for both domestic migration policy and international migration diplomacy.

Identitarianism and the Trump Administration

The administration’s kinship with identitarian ideals can be traced, though not exclusively, to its strategic use of “replacement migration” and “remigration.”

The term “replacement immigration” appears in a 2002 UN Population Division report describing the potential role of foreign-born populations in offsetting population decline, demographic changes, and a shrinking workforce.

Yet, the term also directly evokes Renaud Camus’s 2011 book The Great Replacement, the cornerstone of identitarian thought. The book has become influential in white supremacist circles by having popularized the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims that native populations are being deliberately and demographically substituted through immigration.

In far-right circles, the 2002 UN report on population management is frequently presented as “evidence” of this supposed plot.

Closely tied to this theory is Camus’s second popular term of “remigration.” Standard diplomatic and administrative terms like repatriation, deportation, or asylum reform refer to the return of undocumented migrants. By contrast, “remigration” is an ideological term for the systematic, often forced, removal of non-white immigrants, with slight variations depending on the group using the term.

Once a fringe term, it has now been popularized in far-right extremist circles and adopted by right-wing populist parties such as Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). The AfD directly referenced the term in a mock plane ticket campaign to “remigrate” migrants on the day of the 2025 German election.

Though this rhetoric should signal a break in American foreign policy, it actually displays continuity.

This terminology aligns with the administration’s November 2025 National Security Strategy, where similar polemic rhetoric was implemented by explaining “the cynical manipulation of [the American] immigration system to build up voting blocs loyal to foreign interests within our country.” Similar to “replacement” or “remigration,” this argumentation has been used to fuel other white supremacy conspiracies.

Almost verbatim, the 2025 security strategy reflects the thesis of former presidential counsel Pat Buchannan’s 2006 book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. In the book, Buchannan argues that Mexican immigrants are plotting to reconquer lands lost after the Mexican-American War to erase the border and take control of American sovereignty. This idea has continued in the recent and popular 2026 book The Invisible Coup, where a similar “invasion” ploy is described through the Mexican consular service and other foreign powers.

In fact, this transition from ideals to practice was made concrete in May 2026 with the administration’s decision to freeze global refugee programs while fast-tracking an exclusive, emergency exception for white South African Afrikaners, directly supporting the far-right “white genocide” conspiracy theory into official U.S. policy.

The danger of embedding this rhetoric in official State Department documents and diplomatic communication is that it invites acceptance of fringe ideas across the government, and in turn, attempts to implement them at home and abroad with serious ramifications.

The Domestic Disconnect

The State Department presents the rejection of the Progress Declaration as critical to protect Americans from unnecessary spending, unsafe communities, and efforts to undermine American sovereignty. This framing is consistent with the second Trump administration’s broader rhetoric that portrays international institutions as constraining U.S. policymaking and targeting American officials. These same arguments were recently used to justify withdrawing from—and possibly sanctioning—the International Criminal Court.

That rhetoric has consequences beyond international diplomacy. It shapes domestic enforcement, which has been mired in political and public backlash. At home, the administration has been forced into a chaotic, defensive retreat by promising “a softer touch” on migration matters and by replacing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem following Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens were publicly killed by immigration officers.

The casualties caused immediate pushback against the administration, as a February 2026 Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll found 58 percent of Americans believe the administration has gone too far deporting undocumented immigrants, 8 percentage points higher than in fall 2025. While another AP-NORC poll shows that approval of Trump’s handling of immigration dropped to 38 percent in January and February 2026.

On the ground, the operation deflated community trust. A survey conducted by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at UC San Diego shortly after Operation Metro Surge revealed that 57.1 percent of respondents strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that they generally have less trust in law enforcement as a result of how federal immigration enforcement was conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents.

The diplomatic affinity to identitarians has sown a tangible disconnect between the public and law enforcement that will likely deepen as hardline policies continue to take lives. Recent examples include Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastian Guerrero, who were both killed during immigration enforcement operations despite not being the intended targets of the warrants.

Beyond the connections to violence and anti-pluralism, terms like “remigration” and “invasion” forecloses policy options that cooperative migration management opens. The language constrains the policy conversation regardless of where public opinion on enforcement actually sits.

The Costs of International Withdrawal

This language is a nail in the coffin of U.S. involvement in cooperative migration efforts. The reality is that the United States cannot execute migration policy without cooperation. Even restrictive repatriation and enforcement depend on bilateral engagement with some sort of mutual agreement.

The International Migration Review Forum and the Global Compact provide guidelines that facilitate adherence to shared norms and a working technical vocabulary on migration governance.

Rejecting those venues raises the price of cooperation. If American partnership now explicitly means “fostering remigration” rather than joint management, partner governments could face higher domestic political costs for cooperating and demand more in exchange. This does not mean cooperation is not needed, rather, cooperation could drift to informal gentlemen’s agreements that weaken accountability on both sides.

Continuing to utilize divisive rhetoric may also narrow the field of governments willing to partner with the United States. The State Department’s reference to “the broader West” aligns to Western governments comfortable with restrictionist language and an irritant to those that are not.

Those that attempt to reject American efforts to create a coercive migration system in line with the administration could and have faced coercion. For example, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said they would not accept deportation flights “until migrants were treated with respect,” yet he was forced to accept deportees or be subject to 25 percent tariffs on Colombian imports.

President Petro later argued that such pressure illustrated the United States as treating parts of Latin America as its “empire,” showing how coercive migration diplomacy can strain relationships with crucial partners that host or serve as transit points for millions of migrants.

Whatever their limitations in tackling migration might be, these international institutions provide the administration with a low-cost opportunity to shape and influence international norms and policies. At a minimum they offer a forum for governments to coordinate responses and identify ways to help migrants find safer homes.

Reflecting on U.S. Grand Strategy on Immigration

A cynic might conclude that examining the administration’s rationale for rejection is futile. The outcome was largely expected: whether the compact was signed or not, the administration was likely to walk away from it. Ultimately, international—and even domestic—criticisms carry little weight with the current administration.

The rejection indicates that strong identitarian rhetoric will likely remain in diplomatic communications, even when domestic operations in line with such rhetoric have caused strong backlash and violence at home.

More dramatically, it signals that a U.S. grand strategy on migration will likely remain marked by detachment from international engagement and a continuation of ad hoc engagement, often involving coercion or agreements with weak conditionalities for the safety of migrants.

Governments should manage migration and guard against transnational interference. But whether anti-pluralist rhetoric and multilateral retrenchment are necessary to do so should be the question at the core of foreign policy discussions on migration.

Jesús E. Rojas Venzor was a 2024-25 IGCC dissertation fellow and is now postdoctoral fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University.

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