US President Donald Trump on Monday warned that Paris will become “a Muslim city very soon” as he urged French President Emmanuel Macron to tighten immigration controls following protests and looting across France.
Trump said he had advised Macron to close the country’s borders, arguing that immigration was contributing to unrest. He made the remarks on Monday as he left the White House for a campaign rally in Kansas.
“I told him a long time ago, ‘You’re making a big mistake in France. You’re letting everybody from the world come in. The whole world was coming in,'” Trump told reporters. “As you know, Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon, and that wasn’t the deal. That wasn’t the deal. I told Emmanuel, ‘You should close up your borders,'” he added.
Trump’s comments came after a reporter asked about Macron blaming protests in France on the US President’s war with Iran, which has driven up global fuel costs.
.@POTUS on the France riots: “Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon, and that wasn’t the deal… Emmanuel should’ve closed his borders a long time ago. I told him to do it.” https://t.co/Ep8mzgPVq8
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 19, 2026
Trump called on European countries to restrict migration and deport people he described as criminals.
“If Europe doesn’t close its borders and bring the criminals out, like the people that are protesting, Europe is finished,” he said. “Europe has to close its borders, like I’ve been telling them for 10 years.”
“They have to close their borders and they have to take people that hate their countries out because otherwise they’re finished. They will not have a chance of survival,” he added.
He also said France needed to remove immigrants who, in his words, “hate the country”.
“They hate the buildings. They hate the people. They hate the art. They have to close their borders and they have to take those bad people out,” Trump said.
Protests began in France last month over school conditions before expanding to include grievances over the cost of living and inflation.
.@POTUS: “The France thing is a very sad situation… What’s happening in France has to do with immigration — not schools, not anything — it’s immigration. I told President Macron, ‘Close up your borders!'” https://t.co/fYfyxcAaky
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 19, 2026
About 500,000 people took part in demonstrations across France on Saturday. Smaller groups subsequently looted shops, attacked police and started fires. The newspaper reported that as many as 2,000 stores were targeted.
Trump’s remarks linked the unrest to immigration, although the protests have included broader concerns about living costs and public services.
About 10% of France’s population is Muslim, according to figures cited by the New York Post, with the proportion slightly higher in Paris. Many French Muslims are immigrants from, or descendants of people from, former French-ruled territories in Africa and the Middle East.
Marine Le Pen, the French populist conservative Presidential candidate ahead of the April election, has sought to distinguish her position on Islam from criticism of Muslims as a whole. “Islam is compatible with the Republic; I’ve said it ten times,” she wrote on X on Thursday, before the latest surge in violence.
Trump had also linked the protests to Islam earlier this month, saying on 6 October that they were about “Islam wanting to take over a once great Country”.
