Hegseth attacks Europe on immigration at D-Day event, continuing trend for Trump officials

LONDON — For the second time in a week, a top Trump administration official has publicly criticized Europe over migration levels, the latest in a series of attacks aimed at political leaders on the continent.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a speech marking the anniversary of D-Day in France on Saturday, commemorating 82 years since the 1944 push to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe, to lambast what he described as another “invasion” of Europe’s shores.

“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth said at the event in Normandy.

“Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive ,” he said. “When will European capitals do something about that invasion?”

His comments came days after Vice President JD Vance incensed his British counterparts with public comments about the murder of the British student Henry Nowak , an 18-year-old white man who was handcuffed by police as he lay dying from stab wounds after his killer falsely alleged a racist attack.

On Monday, the killer, a Sikh man, was sentenced to life in prison over the knife attack last December.

“Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies,” Vance wrote on X. “He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”

The case has led to violent protests, despite Nowak’s father, Mark Nowak, asking that his death “not be used to create further division, hatred or tension.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has accused hard-right figures of exploiting the case to create “grievance and division.”

While Starmer did not push back at Vance by name, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said Sunday that he had spoken to Vance to express his disagreement.

“I said, ‘Look, Mr. Vice President, you’re wrong about this,’” he told NBC News’ international partner Sky News, stressing that the case “has got nothing to do with mass migration” and the murderer was British-born.

Asked if he had been telling off Vance for his intervention, he said he had “urged him that it’s not helpful to tweet in this way.” He said: “We had an agreeable conversation, because we have got a relationship, but I wanted to make him clear that I disagreed.”

This week’s attacks by Trump officials are the latest in an ongoing dispute between the U.S. and its traditional allies in Europe, where hard-right parties vowing to clamp down on both legal and illegal migration routes are gaining traction.

There are signs that tightened rules imposed by mainstream parties seeking to address voters’ concerns are already having an effect. Illegal border crossings into the European Union are down significantly from their peak in 2015, according to data from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, while the most recent overall migration data , from 2024, showed a continued drop in non-E.U. migration into the E.U.

Migration to the U.K. has also fallen significantly, with a big drop in net migration recorded this year largely due to a sharp decline in arrivals of non-E.U. nationals, according to Britain’s Office for National Statistics.

But in December, the Trump administration’s new national security strategy asserted that Europe would be “unrecognizable in 20 years or less” if current trends continue, warning of “civilizational erasure.”

President Donald Trump told the U.N. last year that European countries were “going to hell” due to “uncontrolled migration.”

Starmer said at the time the president’s remarks were “not right,” while accepting the “challenge” of tackling illegal migration.

“There’s a dark irony on the day that commemorates efforts made by Americans to liberate Europe from hypernationalism, Nazism, that Hegseth combines a message on immigration that in turn revives nationalism across Europe,” Moritz Brake, a senior fellow at the Germany-based Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies, told NBC News.

He stressed that making immigration “beneficial and productive” was one of the key challenges for Europe, and that judging by how many votes anti-immigration parties get across Europe, “it’s clearly not being resolved.”

Other issues have also tested the trans-Atlantic relationship. In January, Trump said he would impose sweeping new tariffs on eight key European allies unless Denmark agreed to hand over Greenland, before walking back those threats. Europe also spent last spring negotiating with the U.S. as Trump sought to reshape global trade through tariffs.

Brake said that the trade upheaval, taken together with Hegseth’s comments, serve as “another stark reminder” that the U.S. may no longer be there to help Europe when called upon.

In the past, America “was ready and willing to intervene” for “the cause of democracy and liberty,” added Brake.

Now, he said, “we have to do the work ourselves.”