“I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason …”
This is what United States President Donald Trump had to say about Somali migrants on the first day of an immigration crackdown targeting their community. He insisted that Somali migrants have turned the US state of Minnesota, where some 2 percent of the population is of Somali descent, into a “hellhole” and should be “out of here”. Then, directing his ire at his vocal critic, Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born Democratic representative from Minnesota, Trump said, “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great. ’”
Of course, none of this is new or surprising. Hatred of migrants and asylum seekers has always been the glue that holds Trump’s MAGAverse together. Who can forget that, before his cordial meeting with Trump at the White House, several MAGA Republicans made serious efforts to revoke the US citizenship of New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Since Trump’s rise to power, hostility to migrants has become not just a mainstream component of contemporary politics in the United States but a governing principle.
But the rise in anti-migrant sentiment, and its validation and promotion by those in positions of power, is not exclusive to Trump’s increasingly insular America. Similar rhetoric and tactics are gaining ground elsewhere, revealing a global trend that extends far beyond the United States. Denmark is one such example.
Beneath its long-cultivated image as a progressive, humane and orderly society built on universal healthcare, Lego, highly liveable cities and minimalist designer aesthetics, Denmark has in recent years become one of Europe’s most restrictive states on immigration and asylum. During the recently concluded local elections, Islamophobic rhetoric was on full display, and in the lead-up to the 2026 national elections, the ruling Social Democrats have placed their commitment to tackling the so-called problem of immigration at the centre of their campaign.
Across the pond, in the United Kingdom, the supposedly progressive Labour government seems eager to follow the Danish example. Under pressure from the far right and Reform UK’s enduring rise in the polls, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is eager to convince people that he can be trusted to take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter of Britain’s immigration policy. He has warned that the UK risks becoming an island of strangers unless immigration is sharply reduced, and has promised that his government’s reforms will ensure that migration will fall. That is a promise. Most strikingly, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood recently sent officials to Denmark to study its immigration and asylum regime, a gesture that underscores how dramatically Labour’s stance has hardened.
Xenophobia is also on the rise outside the Western world. It is a staple of policy and practice from Libya to South Africa, a reminder that anti-migrant politics is now a global tool of governance.
Europe-bound migrants in Libya face horrific levels of violence and abuse. According to Amnesty International, they are subjected to prolonged arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture, rape, unlawful killings, extortion and forced labour. These abuses occur within a system effectively underwritten by European governments, which have funnelled funding, training and equipment to Libyan coastguard units tasked with intercepting migrants before they reach international waters. Keen to stem the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean, European Union states have outsourced border control to Libya despite knowing the consequences, supporting the authorities’ ability to continue with measures the United Nations says could very likely amount to crimes against humanity.
Further west, in Tunisia, Black African migrants have faced sporadic violence for years. In early 2023, President Kais Saied claimed there was a criminal plan to change Tunisia’s demographic makeup through irregular migration, turning it into a purely African country that has no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations. His remarks triggered a surge in mob attacks on Black migrants, students and asylum seekers. There was also an increase in arrests, and the police appeared to be targeting Black African foreigners based on their appearance. Those detained included undocumented migrants, registered refugees and asylum seekers, as well as migrants with valid credentials, a stark demonstration of how state practices can shift once xenophobia is given political sanction.
Similarly, xenophobia targeting migrants from other African countries has been a constant feature of life and politics in post-apartheid South Africa. According to Xenowatch, a project hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand that tracks xenophobic discrimination and violence, there have been 1,295 recorded incidents since 1994, including displacement, looting of migrant-owned businesses and killings. Deaths peaked in 2008 with 72 fatalities and 150 incidents. In 2025, while 16 people were killed, the overall number of xenophobic incidents again reached 2008 levels, underscoring the persistence of the crisis.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government systematically overlooked migrant communities, excluding many from relief programmes and framing protection of South Africans as the priority. The state also constructed a 40-kilometre fence along the border with Zimbabwe to block infected or undocumented persons, despite Zimbabwe having only 11 confirmed COVID-19 cases at the time compared with South Africa’s 1,845. Politicians reinforced existing myths about foreign-owned businesses posing health risks. When announcing that spaza shops could remain open, the then-Minister of Small Business Development, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, declared that only South African-owned, managed and run shops would remain open.
South Africa has also seen the rise of explicitly anti-immigrant mobilisation. The Put South Africans First movement, a coalition of civil society groups advocating the mass deportation of African migrants, organised a march to the Nigerian and Zimbabwean embassies on September 23, 2020, claiming that foreigners contribute to South Africa’s social ills such as drugs, human trafficking and child abductions.
The vigilante group Operation Dudula emerged from this movement in 2021, following the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma. Although it claims to address crime and drug use in Gauteng communities, its name, Dudula – meaning “force out” in isiZulu – captures its true focus. The group is better known for calling for mass deportations, blocking migrants from accessing hospitals and clinics, and raiding or shutting down foreign-owned businesses.
Of course, I could keep going, from increasing restrictions in countries like Colombia, Peru, Chile and Ecuador aimed at stemming the influx of Venezuelan migrants, to Indian authorities forcibly expelling ethnic Bengali Muslims to Bangladesh without due process, domestic guarantees and international human rights standards, claiming that they are undocumented. Xenophobia is not confined to any region or ideology; it is now woven into the political life of countries across the globe.
Why are we so keen to give in to xenophobic narratives and policies? In part because they are convenient. They allow governments and societies to externalise domestic failures, offering an easy explanation for problems that are far more complex and often rooted in political and economic mismanagement at home, in austerity, deepening inequality and precarious work rather than in the arrival of strangers.
In this logic, the migrant becomes a ready-made scapegoat, a figure onto whom we project all the ills we believe threaten who we are or what we stand for. It then becomes effortless to claim that migrants subscribe to dangerous ideologies, strain national resources, carry diseases or form part of some insidious plan to alter the country’s demographic or cultural fabric.
Perception becomes reality. Blaming those beyond our borders allows us to imagine the threat lies elsewhere, reassuring us that we are not the problem. The tragedy is that the dysfunctions and corruptions embedded in our own systems remain untouched. And scapegoating the supposed outsider does nothing to make our societies fairer, safer or more humane; it merely buys time for leaders unwilling to confront the crises they helped create.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
