Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday that he directed the agency to avoid the use of “illegal alien” when referring to foreign nationals who come into the United States illegally.
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked Mayorkas about the asylum system in an interview hosted by the Aspen Institute, leading the Biden administration official to tout a memo in which he instructed personnel in his department to refrain from using the term “illegal alien.”
“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 ‘non-citizen,’ and that speaks to the importance of respecting the dignity of the individual,” Mayorkas remarked.
Mayorkas’ refusal to use the term “illegal alien” comes as illegal immigration has spiked under the Biden administration, with an estimated 1.5 million illegal immigrant gotaways being recorded since Biden took office in 2021. There were 415,000 total reported gotaways for 2018, 2019, and 2020 under the Trump administration.
Border Patrol has also reported a 1,000% increase in illegal immigration from numerous different countries from fiscal year 2022 to fiscal year 2023, including China, Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, and Ethiopia, among others.
While illegal crossings into the United States have spiked, endangering American citizens living on the border, the Biden administration has also promoted the CBP One app, a digital platform that allows foreign nationals to remotely schedule meetings for asylum claims. Just under 80,000 foreign nationals entered the United States between January and April by using the app.
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Major cities, including both Chicago and New York City, have struggled to house the thousands of foreign nationals that have arrived under the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, estimates have found that illegal immigration costs United States taxpayers approximately $151 billion every year, with a recent report from Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee finding that illegal immigration places significant financial strain on the American medical system.
One poll from CBS News in late May found that 63% of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of the United States border, while just 37% say that they approve.