How dangerous political rhetoric works to normalize the mass deportation of undocumented Latino immigrants
By TARA ROMERO— tcrome@ucdavis.edu
“Illegal aliens.” It’s a phrase that already feels like Propaganda 101, and yet it’s plastered across news outlets and feeds throughout the country.
With President Donald Trump’s return to office, dehumanizing rhetoric has circulated in the news and on social media in an attempt to justify the mass deportation of undocumented Latino immigrants. Although Trump has only been in office for a month, he has already passed over 20 different executive orders that directly target undocumented Latino immigrants.
It’s unsurprising that “illegal alien” is the term that the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses throughout their website to refer to undocumented immigrants — unsurprising in the same way that their three enforcement subheaders are “arrest,” “detain” and “remove.”
The words our own government offices and officials use to label undocumented immigrants are intentional and harmful. Language is a powerful source of manipulation. Simple things like word choice can be extremely loaded — particularly when used against marginalized groups of people.
Dehumanizing language works in many ways, but specifically in labels. The most explicit form of dehumanization is to reduce a person or group to an animal or object. Just in April of last year, in a campaign speech, Trump himself provided us with an example of this type of harmful language against undocumented immigrants:
“No, they’re not humans,” Trump said. “They’re not humans; they’re animals.”
However, dehumanizing language can also be more subtle. Another word that is being thrown around to label undocumented immigrants is “criminal.” Without the proper context, “criminal” may not seem like dehumanizing language at all. However, “criminal” has a history of racialized violence associated with it. In her work “The Racialization of Crime: A Brief Genealogy,” Miranda Pilipchuk tells readers how criminality appears to be a race-neutral term, even though it has historically targeted people of color.
Furthermore, Education Initiatives Manager at College and Community Fellowship Lisette B. Hughes drew from her own research and personal experience as a formerly incarcerated person to discuss how words like “criminal” and “convict” dehumanize incarcerated people. She explained how these words essentially justify mistreatment and the withholding of basic human rights within the U.S. prison system. They define incarcerated people as no longer people and instead reflections of whatever “crime” they are associated with, further justifying their mistreatment.
With this understanding of how dehumanizing rhetoric works, let’s return to “illegal aliens.”
“Illegal” is an especially dangerous word because it has underlying connotations of supposed morality. There is a mass perception that what is legal must be inherently good. “Good” people follow the laws and “bad” people break the laws. Therefore, “illegal” is automatically “bad.” Similarly to the word “criminal,” labelling someone as “illegal” classifies them both as amoral and no longer a person.
Not to mention, using the word “illegal” to describe a human being doesn’t make any logical sense. How can someone’s own body be illegal? The answer is, it can’t.
Now, as for the word “alien,” this word did not initially have the xenophobic context we think of today. Since the medieval English period, this word instead has meant “foreigner,” or “not from one’s own country.” However, in the U.S., this word has become heavily racialized toward Latino immigrants. In Edwin Ackerman’s research, he found that “illegal alien” was first used to label Latino immigrants during the 1960s as a way to replace a slur against Mexican people. Initially well-meaning, this word has grown derogatory through its use in anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Right now, in the face of mass deportations, word politics may not seem all that important — and honestly, you’re right for thinking that.
However, it feels like so much more than just words. It’s people who have built lives here, people who had kids here and people who just got here wanting to start their new lives — they all sacrificed so much to be in the U.S. and are vulnerable to losing it all. People have already been torn from their families and communities, and even more people live in fear that it will happen to them or a loved one.
Yet, re-centering undocumented people’s humanity is why this conversation matters. The federal administration and politicians are reducing people to terms like “illegal,” “criminal,” “alien” and worse in official statements, while simultaneously stripping people of their livelihoods, agency and human rights. This use of dehumanizing language attempts to normalize these extremist enforcement measures that affect real people.
We cannot allow mass deportation to become normalized, because this is not normal. People should not be living in fear of their own government because they don’t have the “right” papers. The 14th Amendment should not be getting overturned because one guy said so. People should not be taken out of the home they have lived in for 20+ years.
I’ll leave you with the only two words I can think of to replace “illegal alien,” and that’s “Abolish ICE.”
Written by: Tara Romero— tcrome@ucdavis.edu
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.
