The language of expulsion

President Trump's post-shooting ‘remigration’ push isn’t a dog whistle, it’s a bullhorn

I’ve spent enough time in Washington to recognize when a tragedy is being weaponized for political gain. But watching the Trump administration’s response to the November 27 shooting of two National Guard members in D.C. has been particularly stomach-turning - not because I don’t understand the impulse, and sometimes the imperative, to tighten security after such violence, but because of how swiftly and cynically it’s being used to advance an immigration agenda that goes far beyond anything we saw even in Trump’s first term.

The shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was not some random illegal border crosser. He was an elite member of the CIA-backed “Kandahar Strike Force” - one of the most trusted Afghan counterterrorism units - who spent years conducting night raids alongside American special operators and underwent multiple layers of additional vetting before entering the country in 2021. His unit secured Kabul airport during the chaotic evacuation, holding the perimeter while Americans and Afghan allies fled the Taliban takeover.

Emails obtained by the Associated Press show a man who “has not been functional as a person, father and provider” since March 2023, alternating between “periods of dark isolation and reckless travel,” sometimes spending weeks in his “darkened room, not speaking to anyone, not even his wife or older kids.” A community advocate became so worried he would harm himself that they reached out to refugee organizations in January 2024. Lakanwal’s asylum was approved in April 2025, but without renewed work authorization, making it nearly impossible to support his five children under age 12.

What happened after he arrived in America is a devastating failure of resettlement, not vetting. This is a story about what happens when America recruits elite warriors to fight its longest war, makes them promises, and then abandons them to navigate a bewildering new country without the resources, support, or legal work status they need to survive. Many Zero Unit fighters are now struggling not because they’re dangerous, but because they received inadequate support for PTSD, financial struggles, and cultural adjustment.

But that’s not the story Trump is telling.

Within hours of the shooting, the administration didn’t only halt all asylum decisions and immigration applications from Afghan nationals - it launched reviews of green cards for people from 19 countries. Trump himself posted on Thanksgiving that he intended to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” and introduced a term that should make anyone familiar with European far-right movements deeply uncomfortable: “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation.”

The next day, the Department of Homeland Security echoed him: “Remigration now.” The State Department has proposed creating an “Office of Remigration” as part of a broader agency overhaul.

If you’re not familiar with “remigration,” consider yourself lucky. The term has roots in Nazi ideology - specifically the “Madagascar Plan” of the late 1930s to deport Jews before Hitler arrived at his “final solution.” In recent years, it’s been championed by Austrian far-right influencer Martin Sellner and adopted by parties like Germany’s AfD and Austria’s Freedom Party as a euphemism for the mass deportation of non-white immigrants - not just those in the country illegally, but naturalized citizens they deem incompatible with maintaining ethnic purity. The concept is tied directly to the “Great Replacement Theory” - the conspiracy that inspired terrorist attacks in Norway, Christchurch, El Paso, and Buffalo.

This isn’t accidental language. It’s not even a dog whistle. It’s a bullhorn. The Trump administration is deliberately adopting terminology from Europe’s nationalist movements to signal a worldview: that America’s problems can be solved by removing people deemed ethnically or culturally inferior, regardless of their legal status or individual contributions.

This extends far beyond border security into something more fundamental - a vision of who belongs in America based on country of origin and ethnicity rather than individual merit - which rejects the foundational American promise of a melting pot where immigrants can achieve the American Dream through hard work.

Hundreds of American veterans have urged the administration not to abandon the Afghans who fought alongside us. They understand that America’s credibility as an ally depends on keeping our promises. When we recruit warriors to fight our wars with assurances of safety if things go south, then abandon them to spiral in isolation until tragedy strikes - and then use that tragedy to justify collective punishment of entire communities - we’re not protecting America. We’re betraying everything that actually makes America worth protecting.

The language surrounding this agenda has become increasingly explicit. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted Monday night, which Trump reposted, that she’s recommending “a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Trump made his contempt even more explicit. Speaking about Somali immigrants - targeting a community that has been coming to Minnesota and other states as refugees since the 1990s - Trump declared: “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Your country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”

Think about that for a moment. The President of the United States, speaking in an official Cabinet meeting, saying entire national communities contribute “nothing” and their countries “stink.” This follows Trump ending special immigration protections for all Somali nationals after a COVID-19 fraud case involving nearly 80 individuals.

What makes this particularly chilling is the scope of what’s being proposed. This isn’t just about undocumented immigration - the travel ban now covers 19 countries, the administration is reviewing green cards for legal permanent residents, they’re reassessing asylum approvals from the Biden era, and Trump has floated denaturalization: stripping citizenship from naturalized Americans he deems “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

The impact is staggering: 1.5 million migrants with pending asylum cases potentially affected, over 50,000 who gained asylum under Biden now under review, tens of thousands of Afghans in limbo worldwide - including more than 10,000 already approved for resettlement. By June 2025, the foreign-born population had dropped by more than a million people for the first time since the 1960s.

This represents a sharp break even from Trump’s first term. The difference isn’t just in scope but in openness. The administration is no longer hiding behind neutral enforcement language. They’re explicitly arguing that people from certain countries cannot integrate into American society - that geography and national origin determine worth, contribution, and belonging.

Since taking office, that ideology has also been turned into theater. When Trump toured “Alligator Alcatraz” - a detention camp surrounded by predators in the Florida Everglades - the Republican Party of Florida sold beer koozies and baby onesies monetizing the spectacle. Military planes ferry shackled migrants to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison where they’re filmed being processed for White House social media.

The cruelty isn’t a byproduct - it’s the message. And the gap between rhetoric and reality is stark: according to NPR’s review of ICE data, 65% of those detained had no convictions at all, while fewer than 7% were violent offenders. The people ending up in these theatrical detention centers are more likely to be construction workers and landscapers than the “murderers and rapists” the administration claims to be targeting.

Right now, with words like “remigration” entering official government communications and Cabinet members calling immigrants “leeches,” we’re becoming a country that generalizes tragedy to advance an agenda of ethnic hierarchy disguised as border security. And that choice will haunt us long after this administration is gone.