White House Launches aliens.gov Site Highlighting Millions of Immigration Encounters and Arrests

Gov that presents immigration enforcement data in a design modeled on the X-Files television series. Large luminous green text on a dark starry background reads "THEY WALK AMONG US," with the word "DECLASSIFIED" displayed above the title. The site plays the show's opening credits in the background.

It refers to aliens with the pronoun "it" and includes the line: "If you've witnessed an Alien abduction, do not be alarmed. Countless presidents, congressmen, and senior officials knew exactly what was happening. " The website lists over three million "ENCOUNTERS" and displays an "alien arrests" map showing 200,000 arrests across the country from January 21, 2025 through June 3, 2026, citing Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the source.

The source code contains comments such as "← this is your spacing between lines" and "add some breathing room," which researchers said indicate possible use of artificial intelligence tools. S. law since the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, which gave the president power to arrest, imprison and detain noncitizens during wartime and restricted freedom of expression for citizens, according to the National Archives.

California removed the term from its state code in 2021, calling it outdated and derogatory. Data from the Deportation Data Project showed up to about one million ICE encounters from January 2025 to March 2026. Customs and Border Protection recorded about 200,000 encounters from January 2025 to May 2025 and another 200,000 from October 2025 to April 2026.

The project tabulated over 300,000 arrests from ICE data covering a shorter period than the dates shown on the map. Ernesto Castañeda, director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University, said the comparison of noncitizens to extraterrestrials is dehumanizing and could incite hate crimes or profiling.

Shannon McGregor, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the site represents propaganda posted on an official government website and carries authoritarian undertones by presenting one person as the sole solution.

President Trump released more government files about possible extraterrestrial encounters days before the website appeared. The White House did not respond to questions about the site's creation or its use of AI tools. NPR's Kriti Singh contributed reporting to the story published June 3, 2026.