Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth used a speech marking the anniversary of the D-Day landings in France on Saturday to assault European immigration insurance policies.
“Sadly, in the present day, completely different European seashores are stormed by completely different harmful ideologies. Seashores in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and Bulgaria, boats and males arrive,” Hegseth mentioned on the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in northwestern France.
“When will European capitals do one thing about that invasion, or is it too late?” Hegseth requested.
The protection secretary was talking at an occasion commemorating the 82nd anniversary of Allied forces storming the seashores of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Operation Overlord ultimately led to the recapture of France from the Nazis and the give up of the Nazi regime some 11 months later.
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The Trump Administration has been extraordinarily essential of what it has characterised as lax European immigration insurance policies since President Donald Trump entered his second time period, claiming they might result in the continent’s destroy.
The Administration’s nationwide safety technique, launched in December, known as Europe “weak” and “decaying” and mentioned that its governments’ insurance policies on immigration and free speech have left it vulnerable to “the prospect of civilizational erasure”. It additionally mentioned that many NATO nations will quickly “turn out to be majority non-European.”
Vice President J.D. Vance gave a equally controversial speech on the Munich Safety Convention in February 2025, which angered European leaders.
“Of all of the urgent challenges that the nations represented right here face, I consider there’s nothing extra pressing than mass migration,” he mentioned.
Vance famous in his speech a car-ramming assault carried out by an Afghan asylum seeker in Germany the day earlier than his speech.
“What number of occasions should we undergo these appalling setbacks earlier than we alter course and take our shared civilization in a brand new course?” he requested.
Vance used the identical rhetoric once more this week as he publicly blamed the UK’s immigration coverage for the loss of life of 18-year-old British pupil Henry Nowak, who was fatally stabbed final yr in Southampton. He argued in a publish on X that Nowak’s loss of life was as a result of nation’s “mass invasion of migrants”.
“Every time a life like his is misplaced, the correct response—the one response—is righteous anger,” he mentioned.
The person convicted of killing Nowak was not a migrant, however a British-Sikh.
Quickly after Vance’s feedback, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned individuals “making an attempt to intrude in our democracy and searching for to fire up division on our streets,” with out naming Vance.
“The Nowak household are grieving after Henry’s horrific homicide. They’ve mentioned they don’t want his loss of life for use to create additional division, hatred or stress,” the assertion mentioned. “We ought to be respecting their needs.”