The White House Published an Official Site Comparing Immigrants to Extraterrestrials. It Used the Pronoun 'It.'

“They Walk Among Us”

On May 28, 2026, the White House published a page on its official government domain titled “Aliens.” The banner reads “THEY WALK AMONG US” in luminous green letters against a dark starry background. The word “DECLASSIFIED” appears above the title. Below it: “These ‘Aliens’ are the millions of ILLEGALS…Deport them all.”

“We will take care of it… and return it safely to its place of origin.” The White House site refers to immigrants with the pronoun “it.” The language appeared on an official .gov domain.

The page was teased on X with a video styled after the opening credits of The X-Files. Some users initially believed it was about extraterrestrials. It was about immigration enforcement.

What the Site Contains

The site includes an interactive arrest map using ICE data, a live “encounter” counter displaying over 3 million, and a tip line inviting the public to report “alien encounters” to ICE. It lists arrest counts across nearly 12,000 cities and towns.

The data had problems from the start. WIRED reviewed the arrest database and found that more than 700 U.S. citizens appeared in the “alien arrests” data. After WIRED’s reporting, the White House removed 270,214 entries it said were “non-immigration HSI arrests.” The Deportation Data Project found the site’s 200,000 arrest count didn’t match ICE’s own data, which showed over 300,000 arrests in a shorter time frame. Parts of the site’s source code included AI-generated comments like “this is your spacing between lines.”

The Language Is the Policy

The site does not use neutral legal terms. “Alien” has a long history in immigration law, but the White House paired it with extraterrestrial imagery, the pronoun “it,” invasion language, and a reporting mechanism. That combination turns a legal term into a rhetorical tool.

Sarah Mehta, deputy director of the ACLU’s equality division, called the site “sickening.” “It traffics in invasion rhetoric to demonize immigrants and makes a game out of its cruel enforcement operations, where right now, children are being separated from their parents and immigrants are trapped in deadly detention facilities.”

700+ U.S. citizens were initially listed as “aliens” in the site’s arrest data. In 83 locations, every single listed arrestee was American-born. The entries were quietly removed.

Susan Benesch, founder of the Dangerous Speech Project at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, and Rebecca Hamilton, a former International Criminal Court prosecutor and professor of law at American University, analyzed the site using the framework for identifying speech that can inspire violence. They identified four mechanisms: threat construction (depicting immigrants as a danger to “every American family”), dehumanization (the pronoun “it”), empathy suppression, and public mobilization through the “REPORT SUSPICIOUS ALIENS” button that links directly to ICE tip lines.

Benesch and Hamilton documented a specific historical parallel: government-run citizen informant systems. East Germany’s Stasi maintained 200,000 informal informants to report on neighbors. The Gestapo relied heavily on voluntary denunciations.

The aliens.gov “REPORT SUSPICIOUS ALIENS” button creates the same infrastructure on an official .gov domain. As the authors note, “no human has been born hating another group.” The rhetoric has to be built.

As of April 2026, over 70% of ICE detainees had no criminal convictions. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that dehumanizing language about immigrants experimentally increased public support for harsher enforcement policies. Language shaped policy support.

This is not the first time the administration has used dehumanizing language about immigrants. The president has called undocumented people “animals” and “vermin.” The White House doubled down on the language. The Biden administration had moved toward “noncitizen” and “undocumented noncitizen.” This administration reversed that and resumed “alien” in official communications. LULAC, the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organization, called the site a “dehumanizing abomination.”

What You Can Do Now

Call your representative at (202) 224-3121 and ask them to investigate government use of dehumanizing language on official .gov domains. Federal agencies have communication standards. An official site using the pronoun “it” to describe people falls outside them.
File a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel if you are a federal employee who was asked to contribute to or promote the aliens.gov site. Federal employees are protected from being compelled to create political propaganda on government time.
Contact your senators and ask them to support legislation requiring accuracy standards for government data published on official sites. The aliens.gov database initially included 700+ U.S. citizens in its “alien arrests” data.
Document and share the site’s language with local immigrant rights organizations. Groups like LULAC, the Jesuit Refugee Service, and local legal aid societies are tracking the rhetoric and its effect on communities.