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 initially triggered widespread speculation among UFO conspiracy theorists. Many hoped the site would serve as an official Pentagon channel for ‘Disclosure Day’—the long-awaited revelation of extraterrestrial life secrets.

However, those hopes were dashed last week. Rather than providing answers to the mysteries of the universe, Aliens.gov has emerged as a platform using science fiction aesthetics to target undocumented immigrants. Featuring 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 website is equipped with fake secret labels, references to the series ‘The X-Files’, and interactive maps tracking ‘alien encounters’—which are actually data on immigrant arrests. The White House even uploaded an AI-powered animation showing a UFO lifting an immigrant at the southern border.

Linguists and historians suggest this strategy is more than just a joke. Mai Ngai, a historian and author of ‘Impossible Subjects’, stated that linking immigrants to spacecraft is an ultimate attempt to strip away their humanity. ‘Saying they come from spacecraft means asserting that they are not human,’ she remarked.

Etymologically, the word ‘alien’ entered the English language in the 14th century from Latin and French to refer to something foreign. In US jurisprudence, the term has deep legal roots. Although initially bureaucratic, its usage began to shift in the 1940s to refer to Mexican workers and became 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 official lexicon. California removed it from its labour code in 2015, followed by other states such as Colorado and Washington. In 2021, President Joe Biden even instructed immigration agents to use the terms ‘non-citizen’ or ‘migrant’.

However, the Trump administration has firmly maintained 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 apology,’ she asserted.

For activists such as Jose Antonio Vargas, the use of this terminology is highly dangerous. ‘How do you legalise people whom you call illegal or aliens? You don’t. You only call them aliens to facilitate the process of stigmatising them,’ he concluded.