2 hours ago

Grace Eliza Goodwin

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth condemned European countries regarding migration, describing the situation as an "invasion" of their coastlines during a D-Day anniversary address delivered in France.

Hegseth delivered his remarks in Normandy marking 82 years since allied forces landed on French shores to free Nazi-occupied Europe back in 1944.

"Sadly today different European beaches face pressure from different dangerous ideologies" Hegseth said. "Beaches in Spain in Italy in Greece and Bulgaria see boats and men arrive. When will European capitals address that invasion?"

Migration remains a significant political topic across Europe as parties advocating stricter immigration measures gain ground in surveys.

The Trump administration regards tighter immigration controls as central to its domestic agenda seeking additional billions in funding for enforcement bodies.

Hegseth's statements represent continued criticism of European migration approaches from top figures in the Trump administration.

On Friday US Vice President JD Vance linked the fatal stabbing last year of 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak in Southampton by Vickrum Digwa to the "mass invasion of migrants" and called for "righteous anger" as the sole reply.

The Crown Prosecution Service has stated that Digwa was born in Britain.

While in France Hegseth noted that in the decades since D-Day some European capitals have become too "comfortable" with their hard-won liberties and have overlooked that "freedom is not free".

"The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe" Hegseth said. "That freedom must be upheld by this generation of leaders and war fighters or what they fought for was merely temporary."

D-Day stood as the largest seaborne military operation in history and featured the simultaneous landing of tens of thousands of troops from the UK US and Canada across five beaches in Normandy in northern France.

US President Donald Trump has likewise faulted European immigration approaches telling the UN last year that European nations were "going to hell" because of "uncontrolled migration".

In reply UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer described the president's comments as "not right" while acknowledging the "challenge" of managing illegal migration especially from small boat crossings of the English Channel.

Sea arrivals to mainland Europe reached a high in 2015 when the UN reported more than a million people crossed the Mediterranean. Between April 2025 and March 2026 combined sea arrivals to the UK Greece Italy Spain and Cyprus totaled 169341. Crossings to the UK made up roughly 23 percent of that figure.

Between 1 January and 3 June 2026 a total of 9142 people crossed the English Channel by small boat to the UK from France. This marked a 38 percent drop compared with the same period the prior year.

In December the Trump administration released its new National Security Strategy which claimed that if present patterns persist Europe would become "unrecognisable in 20 years or less" and its economic problems are "eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure".

At home the Trump administration has positioned anti-immigration measures as a core element of its program with agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency making thousands of arrests since January 2025.