All Australians Should Be Concerned About the US Surveilling Our Migrant Population

During a 24 November 2025 US Department of State presser, an official told the foreign press that the Trump administration has ordered its embassies in Australia, Europe, New Zealand and Canada to monitor local migrants in respect of crime. And while the Albanese government has failed to mention this, Greens Senator David Shoebridge warns that the nation should not be complacent about it.

On taking power on 20 January, the US Trump administration launched its long-threatened mass deportation of undocumented immigrant program, with the scope of it stunning the planet.

US president Donald Trump has deployed bands of ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officials to conducts raids in various jurisdictions to detain suspected illegal migrants for potential deportation.

The US deportation drive is authoritarian, with thuggish ICE agents disappearing suspected undocumented migrants off the streets. This overtly white supremacist policy has been used to detain citizens advocating for migrants and even people Indigenous to the land. And this process of dehumanisation is beginning to mirror the Nazis treatment of Jewish people during World War II.

The recent announcement from the state department official suggests that the US will be monitoring people of a “migration background” in Australia in terms of criminal offences in order to curb the “existential threat” they pose to western civilisation, and considering the White House is taking it upon itself to surveil Australians, it’s then really only a step away from conducting local enforcement.

Sticking its nose in

“This is an attempt at direct political interference from the Trump administration to try to impose Donald Trump’s offensive and racist migration and domestic policies on Australia and the rest of the United States’ allies,” warned Senator David Shoebridge. “It is extraordinary that the US issued this statement, and the Albanese Labor government has said absolutely nothing in response.”

“Sovereign governments are meant to stand up and oppose this kind of intimidation, threat and political interference whether it comes from a so-called friend or a global opponent,” the Greens crossbencher told Sydney Criminal Lawyers.

The second coming of the Trump administration has been markedly more concise in its agenda than its first time around. The White House has made it clear its progressing policies advancing a heteronormative, white supremacist and patriarchal societal outlook, via expelling undocumented migrants, repealing trans and gender diverse rights and ending prioritisation of diversity in hiring.

The Trump administration has made certain that it will be exerting its influence over the Australian political sphere from early on. It has insisted the nation lift its defence spending to 3.5 percent of GDP, and it has further insisted that Australian universities fall into line on dropping diversity hiring and recognition of more than two sexes, or their US funding will be cut.

The White House has now told all of its western allies, including Australia, that it will be surveilling its populations for crime caused by its nonwhite people of a migration background for lawbreaking. And the US is in no way giving its allies any choice in this matter.

“No one in Australia should feel comfortable that the United States won’t weaponise this and use it against our politics and use if for their own purposes,” the Greens justice spokesperson underscored.

Drifting jurisdiction

In informing various western news outlets that their embassy staff will be actively surveilling local migrant crime, the US state department official reiterated that this policy shift was all about mass migration being “an existential threat to western civilization and the safety of both the West and the world”. So, this suggests that migrant crime here could be considered a threat to the United States.

The reason the US having this interest in Australian citizens and residents of a migration background should be of heightened concern is that the US has been making significant military inroads in the north of this continent, which sees US troops and weapons stationed up there, while local forces are becoming increasingly interoperable with US forces and US control over local bases is stepping up.

The soft US military colonisation in the north is creeping down the west and the east coasts of the continent, as a US submarine presence is set to be established in Western Australia, as well as likely somewhere on the eastern seaboard. So, any suggested threat that non-European migrants could pose to Australia is too likely to risk stability to local US military assets in Washington’s thinking.

US war secretary Peter Hegseth told the AUSMIN conference this week that the US is upgrading its military infrastructure and presence in Queensland and the Northern Territory. And this comes as Hegseth is embroiled in a controversy over ordering illegal military strikes against 11 boats in the Caribbean, murdering 80-odd suggested narcoterrorists, who are more likely to be fisher people.

“The Trump administration has made it pretty clear that they don’t feel bound by international law or traditional legal standards when it comes to applying force, pressuring allies or even killing people,” Shoebridge continued.

“The US defence secretary is under close investigation in the United States for appalling potential war crimes with his double-tap missile strike of alleged drug smugglers on the high seas,” he added.

The slippery slope we’re on

The Greens senator further stressed that “the Trump administration for its own narrow political purposes is commencing a war in the United States against minorities, against multiculturalism and you can see the destruction that is causing in the United States”.

Despite only being in power for eleven months, the Trump administration has influenced an Australian uprising of far-right white nationalists. This too has been influenced by a nationalist movement in the United Kingdom. The local movement has included neo-Nazi participation, and it has been holding national days of protest on a monthly basis since August.

These developments occurring across the US, the UK and Australia – the AUKUS powers – at present are not thought to be unrelated. Indeed, a rising far-right across the western world appears to be well connected across continents.

Since Trump was elected into office in November 2024, the Albanese government has gone onto pass several rounds of extreme migration laws that serve to expediate the deportation of “illegal noncitizens” via an agreement with the poor island nation of Nauru, where criminalised noncitizens will be sent with the Australian Finks outlaw motorcycle gang being paid to monitor them.

“It seems very clear that they want to export that internal conflict to their allies and partners around the world,” Senator Shoebridge further warned in respect of Trump’s intentions this week.

“If you wanted a demonstration as to why Australia should be wanting to distance itself from the United States, rather than embracing it as Labor is doing through AUKUS, then this is exhibit A,” the Greens lawmaker said in ending.