White House website uses 'aliens' metaphor for immigrants, sparking criticism

"THEY WALK AMONG US," declares a new White House web page in large, luminous green letters against a dark starry background. Above the title is the word "DECLASSIFIED."

The website, aliens.gov, continues to talk about the threat of "aliens" with the opening credits of "The X-Files" playing in the background, spitting out one letter at a time: "they do not belong here...Countless presidents, congressmen, and senior officials knew exactly what was happening. Instead of protecting American citizens, they chose to cover it up."

But the site isn't about extraterrestrials or alien encounters, even though President Trump had released more government files about possible extraterrestrial encounters days before. "These 'Aliens' are the millions of ILLEGALS...Deport them all," it says. "THEY WEREN'T LITTLE GREEN MEN."

Researchers decry dehumanizing wordplay that targets immigrants

"Aliens" has been a term in American law since the 1700s. One of its earliest appearances was in the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. The laws gave the president power to arrest, imprison and detain "aliens", or noncitizens, during wartime, and also restricted the freedom of expression for citizens. The laws were passed out of concern that noncitizens would sympathize with the French should the country go to war with the U.S., according to the National Archives. California struck the term "aliens" from its state code in 2021, calling the language "outdated and derogatory."

The wordplay fuses people's desire for hidden knowledge and pop culture with anti-immigrant sentiment, said Ernesto Castañeda, director of Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University.

"Saying ['alien'] instills fear," said Castañeda, who said that by further comparing noncitizens to extraterrestrials is "dehumanizing."

A part of the website refers to "aliens" with the pronoun "it": "If you've witnessed an Alien abduction, do not be alarmed," the government website says. "We will take care of it… and return it safely to its place of origin."

While many may dismiss the wordplay as a joke, even one of bad taste, said Castañeda, "for a few people, it may be another license to act violently against people that they may think are aliens, undocumented. They may be another incitement to hate crimes and to profiling people."

The website is yet another example of the Trump administration making light of the toll of immigration enforcement through a "memefied communication style," said Shannon McGregor, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies the role of media and social media in political processes. The government's communication and even governing style is "wrapped up in 'everything's a joke, nothing matters,' as an excuse for pushing the envelope over and over," she said.

McGregor said the "extraterrestrial" language ties into "white supremacist ideas." The website warned of an "invasion" of "aliens" and said "President Trump was the first to call out the real danger Aliens pose to every American family, every community, and the future of our nation."

What sets this website apart from previous messages, McGregor said, is that it's clearly propaganda, posted on an official government website. She said the page has authoritarian undertones, "this idea that there's only one person who can fix it. And the one savior…is Trump himself."

Immigration numbers with nebulous sources

The website lists over three million "ENCOUNTERS" in a dramatic display, but it's unclear what the number includes.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement counts detentions and arrests as "encounters." But the agency also uses the term to reference other types of interactions when ICE merely considers whether or not to enforce the law against a person, according to the Deportation Data Project, a group of researchers and attorneys that requests and puts out immigration enforcement datasets from the U.S. government.

There were up to about one million such ICE encounters from January 2025 to March 2026, according to data the group obtained from public records requests.

It's possible that the three million number also includes encounters with Customs and Border Protection officers, who also enforce immigration laws. CBP's data shows the agency totalled about 200,000 encounters each from two periods where NPR was able to access records, from Jan 2025 to May 2025 and from Oct 2025 until Apr 2026.

That is not the only data point the site uses without a clear source. The "alien arrests" map on the website displays the number of arrests for over thousands of localities starting from Jan 21, 2025 through now, totaling 200,000 across the country, citing ICE as source. However, the Deportation Data Project tabulated over 300,000 arrests from ICE data covering a shorter time frame.

In a statement, an unnamed White House spokesperson said, "The aliens.gov website pulls data directly from DHS arrest reports to communicate just how many illegal aliens are present in our country, and highlight the Trump Administration's efforts to remove them."

Website design may have involved AI

There are also signs that at least part of the website was created using AI tools. The website's source code includes comments like "← this is your spacing between lines" and "add some breathing room" which indicate that at least part of the code might have been generated with artificial intelligence tools. When such tools are used to assist with coding, they tend to include ample commentary, partially to help users follow along with what the tool is doing.

The administration has embraced AI-generated media in social media posts and has encouraged the use of AI in government, while the details on how it has been implemented have been scant.

The website appears to be a rush job, said McGregor. "It may be just to generate attention…away from the things that are really unpopular and harming President Trump and the Republican Party's credibility right now," she said, referencing high gas prices and the war with Iran.

The White House did not respond to questions about why it created the website or about its use of AI.

NPR's Kriti Singh contributed reporting to this story.