On Saturday morning, as hundreds of far-right activists and lawmakers from across Europe gathered outside a conference center in the central Portuguese town of Figueira da Foz, a group of half a dozen men dressed in identical uniforms of khaki chinos, dark blue shirts, and sunglasses marched into the parking lot.
On the lapels of their jackets, some wore the red and blue circular emblem of Patriot Front, the US white-supremacist group formed in the wake of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and known for marching in large numbers while wearing masks and targeting left-wing events. When WIRED asked one of the men if they were members of the group, he said yes.
This group was just one aspect of the flood of American far-right figures who traveled thousands of miles to attend the Remigration Summit, a conference held south of Porto featuring European political leaders and hundreds of others to discuss remigration, a racist, far-right European plan to expel minorities and immigrants from Western nations.
Prominent white supremacist Jared Taylor, president of the New York Young Republican Club Stefano Forte, and Greg Bovino, the former Border Patrol leader who terrorized immigrant communities in Minneapolis and Chicago, were all present.
Bovino said he was there to forge closer links to European right-wing groups and claimed that remigration was already underway in the US, though it was not happening fast enough.
“Over the past year, remigration did actually occur [in the US] … but [they] got a long way to go,” Bovino told WIRED on Saturday. He then criticized the leaders now running the administration’s deportation efforts, including secretary of homeland security Markwayne Mullin. President Donald Trump “needs a little bit better advice, and Mullin's a great guy, a great plumber, no doubt about that,” Bovino said. “He could probably fix a leaky faucet, but a hundred million illegal aliens is not a leaky faucet.” (Mullin previously ran a plumbing business.)
Remigration is a policy that has gained prominence in Europe over the past five years, thanks mainly to the efforts of conference organizer Martin Sellner, a former member of a neo-Nazi group who founded the far-right Identitarian Movement of Austria and was referred to as “the godfather of remigration” during the event.
Remigration, according to the plan Sellner published on his website, would ultimately see the removal of not only illegal immigrants in a country but also citizens who have not assimilated to the country’s cultures and traditions. The concept has been adopted by far-right political parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Vox in Spain, as Sellner has successfully forged close links to far-right parties across Europe. Some elected lawmakers espousing remigration spoke at the event.
In recent years, the concept has made its way across the Atlantic, where Trump and his administration have seemingly embraced the idea, setting up an Office of Remigration within the State Department and promoting the concept on social media.
Collaboration appeared to be the name of the game at Sellner’s conference, where Americans went to Europe to learn from their right-wing counterparts, exchange information, and make connections with far-right activists, extremist groups, and political parties.
Just before the conference began, media, including WIRED, were informed they would not be allowed to attend and were instead relegated to a tent in the car park that featured a small table, a handful of chairs, and a single iPad where the speeches from inside were streamed. The organizers said the decision was taken to protect the identities of some attendees who may lose their jobs if they were reported to be attending the event. (These attendees, who WIRED watched walk into the event, largely appeared to be young white men, most wearing virtually identical attire of tight-fitting chinos, bare ankles, and crisp white shirts.)
Forte was one of the first to speak at the event. In addition to the New York Young Republican Club, Forte is also the executive director of the 1776 Project PAC, which has funded parental rights candidates in school board races in Pennsylvania and Texas.
During his speech, Forte referred to New York mayor Zohran Mamdani as an “anti-American, radical Islamic migrant mayor.” Forte told the press that he did not speak for the Trump administration but in the same breath spoke about Trump endorsing European far-right leaders.
“When we come overseas, and we have conversations about foreign policy, the president is going to make his picks,” says Forte. “It’s obvious that there is a way that we would like Europe to be reshaped in the modern era, because Europe is not strong right now, and there needs to be new leaders.”
While Forte refused to say specifically what types of immigrants he wants to remigrate, Jared Taylor, who has been a leading figure in the American white-supremacist community for decades, was more explicit.
“We used to be a country that was 90 percent European. Now whites are headed for minority status,” Taylor tells WIRED. “Here in Europe you have political parties that are called far right, and they are quite explicit. They want their nation to be as they were … and that is impossible if they let in too many Muslims, Africans, Central Americans … Nothing is more natural and healthy and moral than to wish to remain a master in your own house.”
Trump has used the word remigration sparingly, but he has used it. In June and July 2025, Trump mentioned the term remigration three times on his Truth Social platform, linking it to mass deportations in the US. “It’s called “REMIGRATION” and, it will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote in a July 4 post on Truth Social. Trump’s actions have an impact, particularly among those attending this conference.
“When the word is acknowledged by the president of a major power … one can no longer say that it is marginal,” Jean-Yves Le Gallou, a former member of the European Parliament for the French far right under Jean-Marie Le Pen, told Politico at the event.
A Patriot Front member WIRED spoke to refused to say why the group’s members were attending the conference. While the group is US-based, it does have strong ties to Europe via the Active Club network, which promotes a white-nationalist ideology under the guise of fitness classes. The movement is a transnational network, made up of at least 187 chapters in 27 countries, including outfits in more than a dozen European countries, according to a 2025 report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
“With the Trump administration's support, American and European extremists believe that the time is right for international institutional collaboration to put this ethnic cleansing plan into action,” Wendy Via, cofounder and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, tells WIRED. “And having Gregory Bovino, whose agents killed two American citizens, speak at the Remigration Summit demonstrates European extremists are looking to the United States as proof that remigration, no matter how violent, is possible.”
Many of the speakers and attendees who WIRED spoke to during the event had different interpretations of what remigration meant, but Bovino said he was clear about its meaning: “Assimilation,” says Bovino, clutching an orange notebook featuring a sticker of himself and his former X handle on the front. “Are you willing to assimilate to the United States culture? If you're not, then don't come.”
After speaking to the press, Bovino went inside to a hero’s welcome, greeted on stage with chants of “USA, USA, USA.” Bovino announced that remigration was “the most important topic of our lifetimes.” He urged those listening to learn from the Trump administration and to focus on strategic planning, countering the mainstream media, and dealing with lawmakers who don’t agree with your worldview.
“We care about Europe, especially on this topic. Again, this is one that binds us together,” Bovino said. “Use us. Many of you have my phone number. I am a phone call away, and I would absolutely love to ensure that those lessons are not learnt a second time.”
One person who took Bovino up on his offer was Kay Gottschalk, a German lawmaker and cofounder of the AfD, who told reporters that he had already spoken to Bovino and invited him to speak at the German parliament.
Bovino did not wear his infamous trench coat (that California governor Gavin Newsom called Nazi-coded), but he was shown wearing it in pictures displayed on stage, and he promised those in attendance that if they fully implemented remigration, then he would return and put the coat on.
“I’ll make you a deal Europe; we get this remigration underway full-throttle in Europe, I’ll break that trench coat out, and I’ll wear it on European soil,” Bovino said. The crowd erupted in applause.
This is an edition of Hugo Lowell’s Inner Loop newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.
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