Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a speech marking the anniversary of the D-Day landings in France on Saturday to attack European immigration policies.
“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive,” Hegseth said at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in northwestern France.
“When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late?” Hegseth asked.
The defense secretary was speaking at an event commemorating the 82nd anniversary of Allied forces storming the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Operation Overlord eventually led to the recapture of France from the Nazis and the surrender of the Nazi regime some 11 months later.
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The Trump Administration has been extremely critical of what it has characterized as lax European immigration policies since President Donald Trump entered his second term, claiming they could lead to the continent’s ruin.
The Administration’s national security strategy, released in December, called Europe “weak” and “decaying” and said that its governments' policies on immigration and free speech have left it at risk of “the prospect of civilizational erasure”. It also said that many NATO countries will soon “become majority non-European.”
Vice President J.D. Vance gave a similarly controversial speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, which angered European leaders.
“Of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration,” he said.
Vance noted in his speech a car-ramming attack carried out by an Afghan asylum seeker in Germany the day before his speech.
“How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?” he asked.
Vance used the same rhetoric again this week as he publicly blamed the United Kingdom’s immigration policy for the death of 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak, who was fatally stabbed last year in Southampton. He argued in a post on X that Nowak’s death was due to the country’s “mass invasion of migrants”.
“Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response—the only response—is righteous anger,” he said.
The man convicted of killing Nowak was not a migrant, but a British-Sikh.
Soon after Vance’s comments, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned people “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets,” without naming Vance.
“The Nowak family are grieving after Henry’s horrific murder. They have said they do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension,” the statement said. “We should be respecting their wishes.”
