Controversy over Aliens.gov: Trump's Strategy to Collide UFO and Immigration Issues

The launch of the Aliens.gov and Alien.gov domains by the Donald Trump administration last March had sparked widespread speculation among UFO conspiracy theorists. Many hoped the sites would become an official Pentagon channel for the long-awaited ‘Disclosure Day’ or the unveiling of extraterrestrial secrets. However, those hopes were dashed last week. Instead of providing answers to the universe’s mysteries, Aliens.gov emerged as a platform using science fiction aesthetics to target undocumented immigrants. With a striking neon green text reading ‘THEY WALK AMONG US’, the site adopts an alien invasion narrative to depict the presence of foreign nationals in the United States. The site was equipped with fake classified labels, references to the TV series The X-Files, and an interactive map tracking ‘alien encounters’—in reality, immigrant arrest data. The White House even posted an AI-generated animation depicting a UFO lifting an immigrant at the southern border. Linguistics experts and historians assess this strategy as more than a joke. Mai Ngai, a historian and author of Impossible Subjects, stated that linking immigrants to spacecraft is an ultimate attempt to erase their humanity. ‘Saying they came from a spaceship is a way of affirming that they are not human,’ she said. Etymologically, the word ‘alien’ entered English in the 14th century from Latin and French, referring to something foreign. In US jurisprudence, the term has strong legal roots. Although initially bureaucratic, its usage began shifting in the 1940s to refer to Mexican workers and grew more popular through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Since then, the label ‘illegal alien’ has often been used with racial connotations. In recent years, there has been a massive movement to remove the word ‘alien’ from the official lexicon. California removed it from its labour code in 2015, followed by other states like Colorado and Washington. In 2021, President Joe Biden even instructed immigration agents to use the terms ‘non-citizen’ or ‘migrant’. The Trump administration, however, firmly maintains the use of the term. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson stated that identifying individuals as illegal aliens is a fact, not an insult. ‘The Trump administration will continue to deport illegal aliens without apologising,’ she asserted. For activists like Jose Antonio Vargas, the use of this term is highly dangerous. ‘How do you legalise a person you call illegal or an alien? You don’t. You just call them alien to facilitate the process of stigmatisation,’ he concluded.