The United States Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has criticised European countries over migration, accusing them of allowing what he described as an “invasion” along their coastlines during a D-Day anniversary speech in France.
Hegseth made the remarks in Normandy, 82 years after Allied forces landed on French beaches in 1944 to free Nazi-occupied north-western Europe.
“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?”
Migration remains a key political issue across Europe, with support growing for parties advocating stricter immigration policies.
Hegseth’s remarks add to a series of criticisms directed at European migration policies by senior officials in President Donald Trump’s administration.
On Friday, US Vice-President JD Vance linked the death of 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak to what he described as the “mass invasion of migrants.” Nowak was fatally stabbed in Southampton last year by Vickrum Digwa.
Vance said the “only response” was “righteous anger”.
However, Downing Street condemned “people trying to interfere in our democracy,” while noting that the Nowak family had “said they do not want his death to be used to create further division”.
The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that Digwa was born in Britain.
Speaking further during the ceremony in France, Hegseth warned that some European capitals had become too “comfortable” with freedoms secured through sacrifice during World War II.
“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.”
D-Day remains the largest seaborne military invasion in history, involving tens of thousands of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada landing on five beaches in Normandy.
President Trump has also repeatedly criticised Europe’s handling of migration. Addressing the United Nations last year, he claimed European nations were “going to hell” because of “uncontrolled migration”.
In response, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Trump’s comments were “not right”, while acknowledging the need to tackle illegal migration, especially crossings through the English Channel.
According to available figures, sea arrivals into mainland Europe peaked in 2015 when the United Nations recorded more than one million Mediterranean crossings.
Between April 2025 and March 2026, a combined 169,341 people arrived by sea in the UK, Greece, Italy, Spain and Cyprus, with the UK accounting for roughly 23 per cent of the total.
Data also showed that between January 1 and June 3, 2026, about 9,142 migrants crossed the English Channel in small boats from France to the UK, representing a 38 per cent drop compared to the same period the previous year.
In December, the Trump administration released a National Security Strategy warning that Europe could become “unrecognisable in 20 years or less” if migration trends continue, adding that the continent faced the “prospect of civilisational erasure”.
Within the United States, the administration has made anti-immigration policies a major focus, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers carrying out thousands of arrests since January 2025.
