May 29, 2026 4:53 PM

The White House’s Aliens.gov Site Brags That ICE Arrested More Than 700 US Citizens

The website, which compares human beings to extraterrestrials, touts arrest numbers from the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown. But some of its details are really out there.

Photograph: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Getty Images

A space-themed White House website that mocks immigrants and compares them to extraterrestrials claims Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested almost half a million people in nearly 12,000 cities and towns in the United States. In 715 of the locations listed, the site identifies at least one of the people arrested as being born in the United States. In 83 of the locations, every single arrestee is reported to be an American.

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Maddy Varner is a senior reporter for WIRED. In the past, she was an investigative data journalist at The Markup, where she brought numbers to stories about labor, education and politics. Before The Markup, she was a researcher at ProPublica, where she was on a team that won a Loeb ... Read More

Senior Writer, Investigations

Dell Cameron is an investigative reporter from Texas covering privacy and national security. He's the recipient of multiple Society of Professional Journalists awards and is co-recipient of an Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting. Previously, he was a senior reporter at Gizmodo and a staff writer for the Daily ... Read More

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Topicsimmigration Immigration and Customs Enforcement Donald Trump politics UFOs aliens websites Piracy national security

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