DHS Cancels ‘Orwellian Edit’ Replacing ‘Illegal Alien’ with ‘Undocumented Noncitizen’

Craig Bannister | January 23, 2025
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During the Biden Administration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was prohibited from referring to aliens who were illegally in the U.S. as “illegal aliens” – but, that ended on Thursday with a directive by the acting DHS secretary.

In immigration law, illegal aliens are referred to as “illegal aliens.” But, the Biden Administration believed that term reflected poorly on people who break the law in order to enter the country.

So, in April of 2021, the heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued memos banning the use of “illegal alien,” in favor of a term with more innocuous connotations, as NPR reported at the time:

“The Biden administration is ordering U.S. immigration enforcement agencies to change how they talk about immigrants.

“The terms ‘illegal alien’ and ‘assimilation’ are out — replaced by ‘undocumented noncitizen’ and ‘integration.’”

But now, “acting DHS secretary Benjamine C. Huffman has wasted no time overturning the Orwellian edict of his predecessor,” The New York Post reported Thursday, quoting Huffman’s memo:

“It is not the role of the Department or its components to substitute alternative politically charged terminology in our official documents for terminology used by Congress in statutes signed by the President of the United States.”

….

“The Department and all components shall adhere to statutory language, which is precise and defined by Congress. For example, the term “alien” is defined at section 01(a)(3) of the Immigration and Nationality Act as: ‘The term ‘alien’ means any person not a citizen or national of the United States.’” 

The move marks a return to the more accurate language use in law, which that was censored by the Biden Administration and Democrats, and replaced with euphemisms, in an effort to destigmatize illegal immigration – in the midst of a border crisis being fueled by Biden’s open-borders policies.

After the memo's release Thursday, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took the opportunity to correct a reporter by explaining the difference between the definitions of ”undocumented” and ”illegal.”