President Joe Biden’s White House has begun referring to border crossers and illegal aliens as “newcomers and “people who are in the country” — a terminology distinction that conflicts with federal immigration law.
On Thursday — while promoting a Senate bill to preserve his catch and release network at the United States-Mexico border — Biden’s White House made a passing reference to border crossers and illegal aliens, calling them “newcomers” to the U.S.
The White House fact sheet on the Senate bill reads:
The bill also includes $1.4 billion for cities and states who are providing critical services to newcomers, and would expedite work permits for people who are in the country and qualify. [Emphasis added]
Earlier this month, in a similar press release on the Senate bill, Biden’s White House touted billions that the legislation would provide to cities and states accepting these so-called “newcomers.”
The Biden administration has made it a point to rid the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of all references to “illegal aliens” or “illegal immigrants,” instead demanding officials use “more inclusive” terms like “noncitizens” and “undocumented individual.”
In July 2023, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended these changes:
In the Department of Homeland Security, I issued a memo very early on that we would not use the term ‘illegal alien’ when speaking of these individuals, we use the term ‘noncitizen,’ and that speaks to the importance of respecting the dignity of the individual. [Emphasis added]
Democrats in Congress have sought to ban the terms “illegal alien” and “alien” from federal law, filing legislation in 2021 that would strip all of their references.
Despite the Biden administration’s attempts, the term “alien” is regularly used as a legal definition to describe a foreign national residing in the U.S. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) codified the term into law and defines it as “any person not a citizen or national of the United States.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
