President-elect Donald Trump will be doing away with the politically correct term “undocumented noncitizen” and returning to “illegal alien” to describe people who have illegally entered the U.S., the Washington Examiner reported on Wednesday.
“In this [present] administration, we used ‘undocumented immigrants,’ right?” a former immigration official who is advising the transition team said to the outlet. “Expect all of that to change.” Another official confirmed that discussions of bringing “illegal alien” back into official government lexicon were accurate.
President Joe Biden’s administration banned the term in 2021 under a directive that hoped to “set the tone and example for our country,” said Troy Miller, the top official at Customer and Border Protection. “We enforce our nation's laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact. The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody,” he added.
The Biden White House also banned the term “assimilation” and replaced it with “integration” in an effort to make government documents more “humane.”
“I don’t see anyone at [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] or [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] using any euphemisms for illegal aliens after Jan. 20,” the second official said.
Also, in 2021 Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, presented the Correcting Hurtful and Alienating Names in Government Expression Act (CHANGE) which hoped ban terms like “alien” in the federal government because the represenative deemed them “derogatory.” The bill has not moved through Congress.
John Fabbricatore, a potential candidate to lead ICE under Trump, wrote to the outlet that he had not heard of the discussions but supported the change. “What is wrong with illegal alien? It connotes no race, religion, or culture,” Fabbricatore said in a message. “It is a purely legal term that was hijacked in an Orwellian attempt to control the messaging about illegal immigration.”