The U.S. State Department said Monday it refused to back an International Migration Review Forum “progress” declaration, accusing United Nations agencies of trying to “advocate and facilitate replacement immigration in the United States and across the broader West,” the department said in a statement.
The department said the United States did not participate in the second International Migration Review Forum, held May 5–8 at U.N. Headquarters in New York, and will not support the declaration. The U.N. Network on Migration describes the forum as the main global platform for member states to review implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, and the 2026 forum was scheduled to produce an intergovernmentally agreed “Progress Declaration,” the network said.
In its statement, the department quoted Secretary Rubio and said, “opening our doors to mass migration was a grave mistake that threatens the cohesion of our societies and the future of our peoples.” The statement said Americans had seen “crime and chaos at the border, states of emergency in major cities, and billions of taxpayer dollars funneled towards hotels, plane tickets, cell phones and cash cards for migrants.”
The department said the United States “will not support a process that imposes, overtly or by stealth, guidelines, standards, or commitments that constrain the American people’s sovereign, democratic right to make decisions in the best interests of our country.” It added that its goal is not to “manage” migration but to “foster remigration,” and in a thread on X accused U.N. agencies of “systematically facilitated mass migration into America and Europe” and of “pipelining migrants to our southern border,” the department said.
The International Organization for Migration said the forum is held every four years for countries to review progress and shape next steps on migration policy. U.N. materials describe the Global Compact as a cooperative, non-legally binding framework intended to improve migration governance while respecting states’ sovereign rights, according to the U.N. Network on Migration and U.N.-hosted texts. The State Department said President Donald Trump ended U.S. participation in the U.N. process to develop the compact during his first term in 2017 and that the administration will again affirm its opposition, the statement said.
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
