Fighting for the high ground on contentious political issues inspires a partisan twisting of the English language. Take this Oct. 19 news from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that “officers arrested 175 unlawfully present noncitizens with multiple DUI convictions.”
“Unlawfully present noncitizens” is how our Department of Homeland Security (DHS) describes illegal (a synonym for unlawful) aliens (the legal term for noncitizens).
In line with open-borders advocates, DHS now calls people with no legal right to enter or live in the United States “undocumented,” as if they simply left their valid passport and visa at the bus station. Activists want Americans to believe that being “undocumented” is just red tape, a bureaucratic hiccup, not an ongoing state of law-breaking by someone who, typically, has the means and ability to return to his home country.
