Donald Trump’s White House has taken its anti-immigration policy a step further. This Thursday it launched a page within its own website that compares illegal immigrants to aliens, making use of the polysemy of the term “alien” in English. It also shows data on the arrests of these illegals, which it refers to as “abductions” carried out by U.S. immigration authorities.
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The site “Aliens.gov”, which displays immigration arrests made by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), opens with a text that mimics the introduction of movies like Star Wars, while a visual narration suggests for several seconds that the U.S. government hid for decades the existence of aliens living among the population.
“For 60 years, the U.S. government has kept a secret closely guarded. Aliens have been walking among us, living in our neighborhoods and interacting with us in our daily lives. They have shopped in the same stores, attended the same classes as our children, and led an apparently normal human life,” reads the message that opens the website.
Then comes the twist. “With one exception, they do not belong here,” it continues. The page ends by revealing that it is not talking about visitors from space, but undocumented immigrants.
In total, the page estimates nearly 3,130,000 “encounters” of immigration authorities with illegals and appeals to the public: “If you have witnessed an alien abduction, do not be alarmed. The alien is in good hands.” “We will take care of it and return it safe and sound to its place of origin,” it continues, using a pronoun that in English is commonly used for objects or animals, but not for people.
The platform also includes a phone line and tools so that citizens can “report suspicious foreigners” directly to ICE, as well as email sign-ups to receive alerts about immigration operations in certain areas.
Likewise, after accusing “countless presidents, congressmen, and high officials” of “knowing perfectly well” that “millions arrived under the cover of darkness and integrated directly into our society,” the White House website reveals its wordplay clarifying that the individuals it refers to “were not little green men,” but that “these ‘aliens’ are the millions of illegals who invaded our country under the cover of darkness.”
“President Trump was the first to denounce the real danger that aliens represent to every American family, every community, and the future of our nation,” the White House defends, describing the U.S. leader as “bold,” “remorseless,” and “fearless.”
The portal includes an interactive map of the United States showing the so-called “alien arrests” made by ICE and other immigration authorities. The “Alien Arrest Map Live” allows users to move the cursor over different regions of the U.S. to see how many arrests were made in each locality and the nationalities of those detained. It also details the alleged crimes, arrest dates, and alleged criminal or gang affiliations.
The site does not specify the exact period to which the captures correspond, although given the volume of cases it could be data released by the Department of Homeland Security in a report that compiles arrests made between September 2024 and April of this year, according to the Efe agency.
The page appears at a time when Donald Trump’s government has reactivated public interest in unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), after the Department of Defense released new declassified files related to investigations on this type of phenomena.
The White House precisely took advantage of that cultural context to build a migration campaign based on mystery, fear, and surveillance, notes Univision.
