The State Department Really Doesn't Want to Talk About the Office of Remigration

The State Department has an Office of Remigration that is not prominently listed on its website or social media. Details about its establishment, leadership, and activities are not publicly provided. The office was created about a year earlier and is linked to a far-right European concept about expelling minorities and immigrants. A source familiar with the work says the office processes payments that may total tens of millions of dollars to facilitate deportations of immigrants to countries they may not be from, with little to no oversight. The office supports expanded efforts to pressure other governments, including those with corruption and human rights abuses, to accept immigrants sent from the United States. Payments lack monitoring and accountability compared with other federal funding managed by the office.

"The State Department doesn't seem to want anyone to know that it has an Office of Remigration. There's no mention on the department's social media feeds or even on the official website. There aren't many details about when it was established, who is running the office, or what work it is carrying out. When WIRED reached out to ask if the office exists, the State Department wouldn't share specific details about the office and its work."

"But the office, created a year ago and seemingly named for a racist far-right European plan to expel minorities and immigrants from Western nations, does exist. The office's main purpose, according to one source familiar with the work, is to process payments possibly worth tens of millions of dollars to facilitate the deportations of immigrants to countries they may not even be from. All of this is happening, the source says, with little to no oversight."

""Who's to know where the money goes, because there's no real monitoring, or any kind of accountability attached to these payments," the source familiar with the work at the Office of Remigration tells WIRED. "In fact, it was made pretty explicit to us by our leadership that they weren't interested in applying the same levels of accountability as we had traditionally applied to any kind of federal funding that we were responsible for managing to international organizations or NGOs.""

"The Office of Remigration is at the heart of the Trump administration's dramatically expanded efforts to urge other governments, many with track records of public corruption, human rights abuses, and human trafficking, into accepting immigrants sent from the US, who are not their own citizens. This is a key part of the administration's broader mass deportation efforts, which have repeatedly even seen US citizens deported to other countries."

Read at WIRED