A little-known State Department agency called the Office of Remigration is paying hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to authoritarian governments around the world in exchange for accepting deportees who have no connection to those countries whatsoever, wrote Greg Sargent for The New Republic on Thursday.
The agency, operating under White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's direction with roughly 15 staffers buried inside the State Department bureaucracy, was initially exposed by a Washington Post investigation.
"It’s really sleazy, ghoulish stuff," wrote Sargent. "The administration has authorized or pledged over $400 million for such agreements with more than 30 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America. As the Post reports, the deals place many migrants in countries to which they have no previous connections, and are structured to skirt 'human rights safeguards' that typically are built into U.S. foreign assistance payments abroad."
Perhaps most striking is what the office is doing to an agency built for the opposite purpose. The Office of Remigration sits inside the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, historically responsible for resettling people fleeing danger into the United States. Career staffers who once carried out that mission are now leaking details of their dismay at being ordered to do the reverse essentially.
The word "remigration" itself carries loaded history — a term with roots in European far-right movements that use it as coded language for expelling nonwhite populations en masse. According to The Post, senior State Department officials objected internally to naming the office this, warning the term evokes ethnic cleansing, but were overruled from above and told the name would stay.
Democrats are already eyeing ways to fight back if they retake either chamber of Congress next year. Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL), a senior Appropriations Committee member, argues Congress should use its funding power to shut the practice down entirely.
"Removing individuals to countries where they have no ties is unconscionable," Frankel said.