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The co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany has called for more deportations of immigrants as the party launches its program for next month’s national election.

In a fiery speech to supporters in the small town of Riesa in Saxony, eastern Germany, Alice Weidel said that under the AfD – which is second in the polls with a record share of the vote of almost 20 percent – Germany will witness to “return home on a large scale”.

Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for chancellor in the election, used the controversial term “migration” to describe the policy.

The word was coined by the right-wing Austrian ideologue Martin Sellner, who defined “immigration” as the forced removal of immigrants who break the law or “refuse to integrate”, regardless of their citizenship status – a an idea that critics say is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

On Saturday Weidel said: “I have to tell you honestly: if it’s called remigration, then it’s called remigration.”

He was met with loud applause from party delegates who also repeatedly shouted “Alice für Deutschland” – a play on the banned Nazi-era slogan “Alles für Deutschland”, meaning “all for Germany”.

Weidel, a former Goldman Sachs analyst, has cast himself as the more presentable face of a party that includes ultraradicals classified as right-wing extremists by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

Earlier this week in a joint X appearance with Elon Musk, Weidel used an unprecedented public platform to argue that the AfD – which also advocates normalization of relations with Moscow and the destroying wind turbines – has become a major political force.

However, it has little chance of coming to power in the upcoming elections because all other major parties in Germany have refused to participate.

Weidel’s embrace of immigration was seen by some in the party as a nod to Björn Höcke, the flag-bearer of the radical right who led the AfD to a historic first-place finish in regional elections in the eastern German state of Thuringia in September.

“This is a concession to Björn Höcke,” said Kay Gottschalk, a member of the German Bundestag who belongs to the more moderate side of the party. “It’s a word, of course. I’d say it another way – send them back – but that’s what the delegates want.

Weidel also used his speech to repeat his call for the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany to be put back into operation, to restore nuclear power and to oppose gender studies programs.

The party gathering was met with massive protests. Around 10,000 anti-AfD demonstrators showed up and police put Riesa, a town of 30,000 people, on lockdown, delaying the start of the conference by two hours.