US President Donald Trump led far-right attempts Friday on both sides of the Atlantic to make political capital from Spain’s migration crisis, portraying the migrant surge in Ceuta as a warning for America if his opponents get into power.
“It’s terrible. Remember that picture. That’s going to be us in three years if the wrong side gets in,” Trump was quoted as saying by Fox News. “If the Democrats get in, you will not live a very good life.”
With polls showing Trump’s support has fallen into the low 30 percent range and opposition Democrats hoping to win at least partial control of Congress in November midterm elections, the crisis in Spain offers Republicans a chance to return to one of their political strongpoints.
READ ALSO: Spain says 60,000 migrants stormed Ceuta but 25,000 have returned to Morocco
News footage of migrants overwhelming barriers to get into Ceuta — a tiny Spanish territory on the Moroccan coast — aired repeatedly on Fox News and went viral across right-wing Trump-allied social media accounts.
NEW: President Trump reacts to the massive migrant surge overwhelming Ceuta, Spain, warning it could happen in America.
“It’s terrible. Remember that picture. That’s going to be us in three years if the wrong side gets in,” Trump tells Fox News’ @JacquiHeinrich, referring to… pic.twitter.com/Avwc1fVMYQ
— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 31, 2026
There were similar reactions from a range of right-wing and Trump-linked leaders in Europe.
Far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel claimed in an X post that “Ceuta was left in ruins overnight” by the mass influx from Morocco.
She argued that Germany is “likely the destination for most of these migrants.”
READ ALSO: Why did Morocco open the border to migrants at Spain’s Ceuta enclave?
“Germany must prepare itself: borders must be secured and rejections rigorously enforced,” wrote Weidel, whose party is backed by top Trump officials.
Both Italy’s right-wing prime minister Giorgia Meloni and the populist right-wing ruling coalition in Finland called for excluding Spain from the European visa-free zone as a result of the situation.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, a billionaire Trump supporter, said the Ceuta situation was caused by Spain’s policy of offering hundreds of thousands of migrants already in the country a legal status.
“They are replacing Spaniards with migrants,” Babis said.
‘Invasion of the West’
Trump’s election victory over Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024 was fuelled by voter worries over uncontrolled migration on the US-Mexico border and his lurid warnings of migrants coming to murder Americans and even to eat their pets.
The Trump administration leapt on the Ceuta crisis in a coordinated messaging barrage.
The State Department issued a statement blaming Spain’s government for “deliberate efforts to enable and facilitate mass illegal migration into Europe.”
READ ALSO: Can an EU member state be kicked out of Schengen zone?
Without giving detail, the statement said Washington was “considering actions to defend Americans at home and abroad from this threat and stand ready to assist other European allies considering similar options.”
Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, posted news footage of the Ceuta migrant wave and said it highlighted “radical left-wing globalist policies that have enabled the Invasion of the West.”
“These images out of Spain are an unfortunate reminder of the consequences of mass migration,” Vance posted on X.
READ ALSO: What happens to undocumented migrants after they arrive in Spain?
Late Thursday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a chief architect of Trump’s anti-migration crackdown, posted video of the Ceuta crisis and said “Democrats will see your home trampled and stolen by invaders and they will rejoice.”
X and Tesla trillionaire Elon Musk has also been tweeting continuously about Ceuta, saying that 90 percent of the planet has a financial reason to move to Spain because of its migration policies.
