Trump Escalates Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric as White House Embraces Far-Right Ideology

In 2018, Donald Trump denied describing countries whose citizens migrate to the United States as “shithole countries.” Today, however, the U.S. president has adopted the term and escalated his anti-immigration rhetoric with a strongly xenophobic tone.

During a rally in Pennsylvania on Wednesday promoting his economic agenda, Trump openly repeated the phrase “shithole countries,” which sparked major controversy when reported in the media during his first term.

Trump said, “We had a meeting (with elected officials), and I asked them: Why do we only take people from shithole countries? Why don’t we take people from Sweden or Norway?”

He added, “We only take people from Somalia. From disastrous, filthy, disgusting places full of crime.”

Trump recently referred to Somali immigrants as “scum.”

Democratic Senator Ed Markey wrote on X that these remarks are “further proof of Trump’s racist agenda.”

On the other hand, Republican Representative Randy Fine defended Trump, telling CNN that “not all cultures are equal,” insisting that “the president is speaking in a language Americans understand.”

Karl Bohn Templin, a history professor at the University of Albany in New York, told AFP that such references to immigrants as incapable of being part of an advanced society “have long existed within the U.S. far-right.”

“What’s different today,” he added, “is that these statements are coming directly from the White House—the most powerful platform.”

Throughout his campaign, Trump repeatedly attacked undocumented immigrants, particularly those from Haiti and Latin America, accusing them of “poisoning the blood” of the country—a phrase critics liken to Nazi-era terminology.

“No More Restraints”

After returning to office, Trump launched a broad and harsh deportation campaign. His administration also suspended immigration applications from citizens of 19 of the world’s poorest countries.

At the same time, Trump ordered the admission of white farmers from South Africa, claiming they were facing persecution.

“There are no longer any restraints,” said Terri Givens, a professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada and an expert on immigration policy.

Mark Brockway, a political science professor at Syracuse University, told AFP, “It doesn’t matter if the immigrant obeys the law, owns a business, or has lived in the country for decades — they are all targets of Trump’s fight against an imaginary enemy.”

The White House continues to single out immigrants, describing them as “vampires,” a term used by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, at a time when Americans remain anxious about rising living costs.

“When immigration is imposed as a national issue,” Templin said, “it’s sometimes about the economy, but also about deeper questions of what it means to be American.”

“Reverse Immigration”

Following an attack by an Afghan national on two National Guard soldiers in Washington on November 28, Trump called on his Truth Social platform for “reverse immigration.”

The concept, developed by European far-right ideologues such as French writer Renaud Camus, refers to the mass deportation of foreigners.

It is tied to the conspiracy theory known as “the Great Replacement,” which claims that a global elite is secretly working to ensure demographic and cultural dominance of non-white immigrants in Europe.

Many experts note that Trump’s rhetoric and that of his allies echo the extremist nativist ideology that emerged in the United States in the 1920s, which argued that American identity was rooted in white race, Anglo-Saxon culture, and Protestantism.

This led to the adoption of immigration policies favoring people from Northern and Western Europe.

White House adviser Stephen Miller recently posted on X: “It is the big lie of mass migration… On a large scale, immigrants and their descendants recreate the conditions and horrors of the troubled countries they came from.”