Statement on U.S. President’s Use of Genocidal Language in His Thanksgiving Holiday Social Media Post

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security is deeply alarmed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s long Thanksgiving Day message, which was posted on the social media platforms Truth Social and X on November 27th, 2025. Trump’s message came in the wake of the tragic shooting of two national guard soldiers by an Afghan national with CIA ties on Wednesday, November 26th, which resulted in the death of 20-year-old U.S. Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom. In his statement, the President utilized language and imagery that is common to genocidal ideology, in particular the scapegoating of a single population – which he refers to as the “foreign population” – for all of America’s ills since the 1950s, including “[f]ailed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc.”

Among other threats, President Trump vowed to stop all immigration from “Third World” countries and "denaturalize migrants,” with the goal of “achieving a major disruption in illegal and disruptive populations.” This harmful rhetoric, in combination with this administration’s brutal and violent policies towards immigrants and anyone suspected of being an immigrant, should not go unnoticed by global genocide prevention organizations, foreign leaders, or the American people as a significant red flag for genocide. Sentiments such as those expressed by the U.S. President are the ideological backbone of ethno-fascism and are early warning signs for genocidal ideology and practice. The Lemkin Institute categorically rejects President Trump’s genocidal lies about immigrant populations in the United States and asks the American people to stand in unyielding solidarity with all immigrant communities.

It is not clear exactly which specific population President Trump was targeting in his message, as he appears to conflate the terms “foreign population,” “migrant” and “refugee.” He began by asserting that the “foreign population” in the U.S., which he numbers at 53 million, is “on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.” He then suggested that a “migrant earning $30,000 with a green card will get roughly $50,000 in yearly benefits for their family.” He then moves on to “hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia” who are “completely taking over the state of Minnesota” – a “problem” about which “the seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing” … “while the worst Congressman/woman in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab … does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country…” He ends with the threat to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” and states frankly that “[o]nly REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation.” In conflating terms like “foreign population” (by which we imagine he means foreign-born population), “migrants,” and “refugees,” President Trump appears to be targeting anyone who was not born in the USA regardless of their current legal status. In his reference to racist dog whistles such as “welfare,” “gangs,” and crime – as well as the strange reference to a “swaddling hijab” – President Trump appears to double down on his racialization of the invented immigrant threat to America. His use of the far right concept of “reverse migration” (or “remigration,” see below) simply underscores the genocidal nature of his thinking.

President Trump’s statement is full of falsehoods that are popular within right wing intellectual circles. The oft-repeated idea that migrants are criminals has been thoroughly debunked. In fact, despite this administration's incessant need to conflate ‘migrant’ and ‘criminal,’ research has shown that cities with higher immigrant populations tend to have lower crime rates. A recent study published in the American Economic Review showed that “throughout American history, immigrants have consistently had similar or lower incarceration rates than US-born citizens.” Migrant families also use fewer social services, such as welfare, than native-born American families. In fact, the majority of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients in the U.S. are native-born American families. Per the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s own most recent data (2023), SNAP recipients are 35% white and 85% U.S.-born.

President Trump’s claim that immigrants in America are from “failed nations,” by which we assume he means failed states, is also false. Most immigrants come from functioning societies. Moreover, the vague and harmfully reductionist concept of "failed nation" mischaracterizes the reality of the majority of countries of origin for immigrant communities in America. For example, Mexico, which is not a failed state, accounted for most of the U.S migrant population in 2023, the year for which we have the most recent data. Finally, the idea that immigrants from “failed states” should be branded by that state failure is senseless. Many people have arrived on U.S. shores from countries torn apart by conflict or in which they face persecution due either to their identity or to their exercise of fundamental human rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In many cases, the U.S. bears responsibility for the destabilization and authoritarianism that has impacted their lives. These people are refugees and have sought asylum in the U.S., as is their right both in international and domestic law. Seeking security and a better future is not a criminal act. The criminalization of a group based on race, ethnic affiliation, place of birth, or legal status is a divisive political tactic that has led many nations down the path of genocide.

President Trump’s Truth Social message is particularly alarming because it is so extreme. Rather than simply insulting and defaming a person or group, as he is known to do, the President has threatened to take radical, comprehensive, and coordinated action against an enormous portion of the U.S. population for no reason other than that he considers it to be racially threatening, unworthy, and less valuable – “garbage,” as he put it when discussing immigrants from Somalia last week. Massive, violent forced displacement is what he meant when he said he would “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries,” “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States,” “end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.” At the time of writing, all decisions on asylum applications into America have been paused, ending for the time being the country’s noble tradition of providing a safe haven for persecuted people worldwide.

We see in Trump’s message the emergence of genocidal ideology towards people of color who were not born in the United States, whom he has stated he wishes to eradicate from the country as a group, due only to their status as foreign-born residents of color. This includes, according to him, naturalized citizens. Not only are President Trump's claims proven incorrect by data, but also his trumpeting of such harmful stereotypes puts him squarely in line with a violent, white supremacist trajectory of American history that has justified mass atrocity, including genocide, throughout the country’s history. His message incorporated two particularly alarming characteristics of genocidal ideology: the creation of “cosmic enemies” and the advancement of a “zero sum logic” regarding relationships between groups. For example, in speaking about Somali immigrants, President Trump describes the following scenario: “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for “prey” as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.” Such extremist narratives are deeply vulnerable to radicalization, both incremental and rapid, due to the violent thinking they both embody and nurture.

Given the radicalization potential of President Trump’s remarks, one can reasonably ask how far back the Administration is ready to go in its denaturalizations. If “non-compatibility” with “Western Civilization” is a criterion for denaturalization, will this affect second, third, fourth and fifth generation Americans whose ancestors were from a region or group considered to be non-compatible? Since incompatibility with an amorphous ideological concept like Western Civilization can be defined in any way an Administration wishes, what safety mechanisms are there for anyone whose ancestors naturalized at some point in time, especially if they were from the so-called “Third World”? Given that “non-compatibility” with “Western Civilization” is such a capacious concept, what is to say that certain ways of thinking – rather than a person’s place of birth – will not be the cause for the Administration’s decision to denaturalize or revoke citizenship?

As these questions suggest, President Trump’s Thanksgiving message is a roadmap for a coming wave of persecutions that go beyond the Administration’s current brutal deportation policies. We see in his message indicators of a massive police and military action that will rival some of the worst periods in U.S. history. In fact, the American government’s apparent plan to determine who is and who is not a “net asset to the United States,” as President Trump put it, has horrific historical overtones reminiscent of such laws as The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and The Immigration Act of 1924/Johnson-Reed Act. Each of these respective periods in American history was marked by violence against either the specific persecuted group or immigrant communities as a whole. Similar to President Trump’s plans, the Chinese Exclusion Act also included a “public charge” provision that allowed the state to deny entry to or deport any immigrant who could not provide for themselves and who relied on – or was likely to rely on – public assistance.

President Trump’s threat to denaturalize U.S. citizens who were not born in the country if they “undermine domestic tranquility” also harkens back to the forced repatriation of Mexican populations in the 1930s in which it is estimated that more than half of those deported were American citizens. It is also reminiscent of the wave of denaturalizations that occurred during the first half of the 20th century for reasons of political affiliation, race, and gender. An estimated 22,000 people were denaturalized over those decades. According to President Trump’s own words, in the case of the “foreign population,” undermining domestic tranquility can mean simply existing within the borders of the U.S. The Lemkin Institute would like to remind both the Trump Administration and the American people that in 1967 the Supreme Court ruled that under the protection of the 14th amendment, the American government cannot deprive a naturalized American of their citizenship without that citizen's consent.

President Trump’s weaponization of the term "Western Civilization” as a justification for the future forced displacement of over 53 million people has made clear that the current U.S. government views not only immigrants in the U.S. but also the Global Majority (“Third World”) as a whole to be a pollutant. His demands for "western compatibility," whatever that is, engages with colonial civilizational narratives that postulated the incompatibility of races and cultures across spaces. It signals a retreat into defensive particularism that is highly correlated with mass atrocity and war. It also does not reflect the demographic composition of the United States throughout history. The United States cannot make any claim to being invaded by foreigners, as it was founded by foreigners. The “Western civilization” in North America was built on both a genocidal form of slavery and multiple genocides of indigenous populations. Despite hundreds of years of efforts by U.S. authorities to eradicate, persecute, and suppress these groups, African Americans and Indigenous peoples have contributed directly to the formation of U.S. history and culture from the very beginning and cannot be disentangled from America’s shared heritage. So too is the case with the many immigrant populations who came to the U.S. in high numbers throughout the country’s history. There was a time when immigrants from Southern Europe were not considered to be white (that is, members of “Western Civilization”). Will the descendants of Italian immigrants be subject to denaturalization under Trump’s Western Civilization mandate? While we leave that question for the President and his advisors to ponder, what we can say without a doubt is that all of these peoples have made up the civilization that exists in the U.S. today, whatever one wants to call it. There is no “Western Civilization” – or any other civilization – in the United States without indigenous peoples, Africans, and immigrants who came looking for sanctuary and a better life. Efforts to deny this historical truth will by necessity result in mass atrocity.

Finally, Trump’s claim that “reverse migration” is the only cure for the alleged ills he listed in his message echoes the popular right-wing and white nationalist concept of “remigration.” The term, which is used by the far right in North America and Europe, refers to the white nationalist belief that immigrants from non-Western countries should return back to their countries of origin. It has become a shorthand and rallying cry for forced removals and ethnic cleansing of Black and Brown population groups from Western countries, which are defined in this ideological system as “white.” The “remigration” concept goes hand in hand with the far-right ‘Great Replacement’ and ‘White Genocide’ conspiracy theories, according to which immigration from the Global South is part of a plot by nefarious global actors - often identified as “Jews” – to diminish the influence, control, and power of white people in the U.S. and Europe. Subscribers to these conspiracies believe that Western nations must work to retain or restore a white majority, which requires the removal of communities of color through “remigration.”

Throughout 2025 we have watched the Trump Administration brutally, forcibly, callously, separate immigrant families, deport students critical of Israel, militarize federal forces against the American people, build what have been deemed equivalent to concentration camps in Florida swamps, weaponize funding for food assistance, and murderously interfere in countries like Venezuela. President Trump’s recent message is further evidence of the Administration’s politicization of legal status and citizenship, both of which are ultimately to be reserved for people deemed to fit within the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement’s vision for U.S. society (see our recent statement, Trump's MAGA Model for Citizenship). The Lemkin Institute believes that President Trump's radical and extreme racialization of belonging and exclusion, as well as the radical nature of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, all but guarantee that this Administration will not stop with the denaturalization of citizens born outside of the United States. Since many U.S. citizens who were born in the country do not at all fit MAGA’s model for citizenship, the logical next move for the Administration will be the revocation of the citizenship rights of people born in the U.S.A.

Currently, in the wake of the shooting in D.C., the Administration has halted all immigration applications from people from 19 countries targeted by a travel ban earlier this year. This affects all applications from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela, including citizenship ceremonies. The Administration has also promised a “comprehensive re-review” of cases of all “aliens” who entered the United States on or after January 20, 2021 – the day former President Joseph Biden took office. Destroying the lives of 53 million people to cast aspersions on the former President and to win political points by “owning the libs” is both horrific and clownish. Attempting to justify collective political punishment of all immigrants, even U.S. citizens, based on an attack by one person is a remarkably rapid lurch towards a genocidal process.

To date, the policies of the Trump Administration have caused unimaginable trauma in immigrant communities. The United States as a whole is much worse off now with the burden of immoral and illegal deportations, a dehumanized and heavily armed security apparatus (ICE) loyal only to the President, the militarization of cities, and a population that — even when standing in opposition — is unavoidably becoming accustomed to the daily exercise of barbarism by the state. Hateful rants from the President drive home the dangers of this Administration and of an American government corrupted by genocidal ideology. If Americans are not careful, the United States could very well travel further down the predictable path to genocide – against migrant communities and anyone else who is not “compatible” with what the Administration is calling “Western Civilization.” The Lemkin Institute urges the American people, as they head into the holiday season, to stand by the immigrants in their communities and push back against genocidal concepts of “civilization” that call for the commission of mass atrocity in their names. Protect immigrants, defend them, advocate, volunteer, fund, report. What is fascism one day can be genocide the next.