US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth criticized European countries over migration for allowing what he described as an “invasion” on their shores, during a speech to mark the D-Day anniversary in France.
Hegseth was speaking in Normandy, 82 years after Allied forces stormed French beaches to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944.
“Unfortunately, today different European beaches are invaded by different dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth said. “Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men are arriving. When will European capitals do something about this invasion?”
Migration has become a major political issue across Europe, with parties supporting hardline immigration policies rising in polls.
The Trump administration views cracking down on immigration as a key part of its domestic policy agenda, calling for billions more in funding for law enforcement agencies.
Hegseth’s comments mark further criticism of European migration policy from senior Trump administration officials.
US Vice President JD Vance on Friday blamed the death of 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak, fatally stabbed last year in Southampton by Vickrum Digwa, on the “mass invasion of migrants” and said the “only response” was “righteous anger”.
The Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed that Digwa was born British.
Speaking in France, Hegseth said that in the years since D-Day, some European capitals have become too “comfortable” with their hard-won freedoms, forgetting that “freedom is not free.”
“The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe,” Hegseth said. “This freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and fighters, otherwise what they fought for was only temporary.”
D-Day was the largest maritime military operation ever attempted and involved the simultaneous landing of tens of thousands of troops from the UK, US and Canada on five separate beaches in Normandy in northern France.
US President Donald Trump has also criticized European immigration policy, telling the UN last year that European countries were “going to hell” because of “uncontrolled migration”.
In response, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the president’s comments were “not fair”, while accepting the “challenge” of tackling illegal immigration, particularly of people crossing the Channel in small boats.
Arrivals by sea to mainland Europe peaked in 2015, when the UN said more than a million people had crossed the Mediterranean. Between April 2025 and March 2026, there were a total of 169,341 arrivals by sea to the UK, Greece, Italy, Spain and Cyprus. Sailings to the UK accounted for around 23% of the total.
Between January 1 and June 3, 2026, a total of 9,142 people crossed the Channel by small boat to the United Kingdom from France. This is a decrease of 38% compared to the same period the previous year.
In December, the Trump administration unveiled its new national security strategywhich claimed that if current trends continued, Europe would be “unrecognizable in 20 years or less” and its economic problems would be “eclipsed by the real, darker prospect of civilizational obliteration.”
Domestically, the Trump administration has made anti-immigration policy a key tenet of its agenda, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents making thousands of arrests since January 2025.