US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings on Saturday to sharply criticize European migration policy, telling a ceremony in Normandy that some European beaches are now “stormed by different dangerous ideologies” and asking when European capitals would “do something about that invasion.”
“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth said. “Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?”
Hegseth was speaking in the French region of Normandy, where Allied forces — including troops from the US, UK, Canada, and other nations — landed on June 6, 1944, in the largest seaborne military operation in history. More than 150,000 soldiers crossed the English Channel that day to begin the liberation of Nazi-occupied northwestern Europe.
The defense secretary said that in the decades since D-Day, some European capitals have grown too “comfortable” with their hard-won freedoms, adding that “freedom is not free.”
“The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe,” Hegseth said. “That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war fighters or what they fought for was merely temporary.”
Migration has become a major political issue across Europe, with parties supporting hardline immigration policies gaining ground in several countries. Hegseth’s speech marked a further escalation of criticism by senior members of the Trump administration.
On Friday, Vice President JD Vance referenced the death of 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak, who was fatally stabbed in Southampton last year, in a post on social media. Vance blamed the killing on the “mass invasion of migrants” and said the “only response” was “righteous anger.”
Downing Street responded by criticizing “people trying to interfere in our democracy” and noted that the Nowak family had “said they do not want his death to be used to create further division.” The Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed that the person charged in Nowak’s death, Vickrum Digwa, was born British.
President Donald Trump has also previously criticized European immigration policy. During a UN appearance last year, Trump said European countries were “going to hell” due to “uncontrolled migration.” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer responded at the time that the comments were “not right,” while acknowledging the challenge of tackling illegal migration, particularly small-boat crossings of the English Channel.
Sea arrivals to mainland Europe peaked in 2015, when the UN recorded more than one million crossings of the Mediterranean. From April 2025 to March 2026, a combined 169,341 sea arrivals were recorded in the UK, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Cyprus, according to figures cited by BBC News. Crossings to the UK accounted for approximately 23% of that total.
Between January 1 and June 3, 2026, 9,142 people crossed the English Channel by small boat to the UK from France — down 38% compared with the same period in 2025.
In December, the Trump administration published its new National Security Strategy, which argued that if current demographic trends continue, Europe would be “unrecognisable in 20 years or less” and that the continent’s economic issues were “eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure.”
The administration has made anti-immigration policy a domestic priority as well. Since January 2025, agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have made thousands of arrests, Hegseth said, a figure that aligns with the administration’s public statements about deportation operations.