Trump Spokesperson Cites Dictionary in Botched Defense of 'Racist' Policy

Win McNamee / Getty Images A White House spokesperson’s attempt to cite the dictionary to “prove” that Donald Trump’s immigration policy isn’t racist has spectacularly backfired on her.

The U.S.

State Department last year created a secretive “ Office of Remigration ” that was apparently inspired by Europe’s extremist movements seeking to expel people for simply being foreign.

The president has also repeatedly called for “remigration” or “reverse migration,” a previously fringe concept that has gained widespread attention in Europe thanks to a former neo-Nazi political activist from Austria.

But the Trump administration has been desperate to argue with its critics over the word’s meaning, saying that it does not mean forcibly expelling people from the country.

A new report in The Washington Post details how senior State Department officials originally objected to adopting the term “remigration” because of its roots in white supremacism.

They showed the acting remigration head a Wikipedia article that detailed the word’s racist origins, but during an all-hands call on June 9, 2025, the new Office of Remigration was announced.

Career officials continued to push back on the office, which seemed to promote “ethnic cleansing via the mass deportation or promoted voluntary return of non-white immigrants,” according to one staffer.

Trump officials, however, insisted it was the exact terminology they wanted.

Asked by the Post about the white supremacist associations, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement: “Not everything you dislike is racist.

Remigrate literally means to migrate back.

By returning illegal aliens to their origin country, we are simply enforcing our nation’s laws.” Bis also included a link to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of “ remigration ,” though the entry didn’t have the intended effect.

As the Post pointed out, one of the definitions listed is “the forcible return of immigrants and often their descendants to the immigrants’ countries of origin.” The White House has repeatedly denied remigration’s European extremist roots, while at the same time using white nationalist rhetoric and imagery to discuss Western values and Western civilization, NPR reported in December.