White House Site Brags ICE Arrested Over 700 US Citizens
▼ Summary
– The White House launched Aliens.gov, a website that uses extraterrestrial imagery to mock immigrants and claims ICE has arrested nearly half a million people in almost 12,000 U.S. locations.
– In 715 listed locations, at least one arrestee was U.S.-born, and in 83 locations, every arrestee was an American; Puerto Rico is listed as a separate jurisdiction and a foreign country.
– Over one-fifth of the listed locations have no criminal charges recorded, and some locations, like an Ohio state prison, are not actual cities or towns.
– A White House statement said the site initially included non-immigration arrests, and an update removed 270,214 arrests; the site’s visitor counter is fake, showing a manually set number that does not match ICE data.
– The Trump administration’s claim of targeting the “worst of the worst” is contradicted by data showing ICE arrests of people without criminal convictions have skyrocketed, and over 170 U.S. citizens have been detained.
A newly launched White House website using a space-themed gimmick to mock immigrants is drawing sharp criticism after data revealed that over 700 U.S. citizens have been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The site, Aliens.gov, went live Thursday after a teaser video on X captioned “They walk among us” sparked speculation about a UFO announcement,a topic the Trump administration has engaged with through recent declassified file releases. Instead, the portal functions as a political tool, framing undocumented immigrants as extraterrestrial threats.
According to the site’s data, ICE has arrested nearly half a million people across roughly 12,000 U. S. cities and towns. In 715 of those locations, at least one arrestee is identified as a U. S. citizen by birth. In 83 locations, every person arrested is listed as an American. The site also includes alleged criminal charges for each location. In 3,159 places, the charge is simply “Immigration.” In 1,082 locations,including major cities like Chicago and Minneapolis,arrestees face charges categorized as “Public Peace,” which encompasses offenses like unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct.
More than one-fifth of the locations listed have no recorded criminal charges at all. Puerto Rico, a U. S. territory whose residents are American citizens, is treated as a separate jurisdiction on the site, with the island itself listed among foreign countries of origin. Some entries don’t even correspond to real towns; one “neighborhood” in Ohio is actually an address for a state-run prison.
After publication, the White House acknowledged that Aliens.gov initially pulled data from DHS that included “a handful of non-immigration HSI arrests,” and claimed the issue has been corrected. WIRED’s review of the updated data found 270,214 fewer arrests listed than before.
The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed ICE targets the “worst of the worst,” but internal data contradicts that narrative. An April report from the Deportation Data Project found that ICE arrests of people with no criminal convictions have surged compared to the six months before Trump took office. In October, ProPublica reported that immigration agents have detained or held more than 170 U. S. citizens.
The site’s central feature,a counter labeled “encounters”,is also misleading. According to WIRED’s analysis of the site’s code, the starting number of 3,129,580 is manually typed in, and the counter’s upward motion is triggered by the visitor’s own browser, not by actual enforcement data. The figure is roughly seven times higher than the real ICE arrest total since January 2025.
Originally registered by the Executive Office of the President in March, the domain sparked early speculation of a UFO disclosure portal, given Trump’s February promise to release new information. WIRED had set up a script to monitor the site’s launch, only to find it used for a very different purpose.
(Source: Wired)
