The Trump administration on Thursday launched Aliens.gov, a space-themed immigration enforcement website that borrows the language of UFO conspiracy culture to showcase federal arrest data and solicit tips on immigrants in the U.S. illegally, turning a domain name that had sparked speculation about extraterrestrial disclosures into a live dashboard of operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The site opens with a scrolling text crawl styled after the “Star Wars” franchise, stars falling across the screen as users read:
“They walk among us. For 60 years, the U.S. government has kept a closely guarded secret. Aliens have been walking among us, living in our neighborhoods, and interacting with us in our daily lives.”
A ticker displayed more than 3.1 million “encounters” as of Thursday evening. The site does not specify the time frame, but the figure aligns with Republican data from the House Homeland Security Committee, which places nationwide Customs and Border Protection encounters at roughly 3.1 million during Trump’s first term — fiscal years 2017 through 2020.
Below the counter, an interactive heat map built on ICE arrest data lets users search by city or state to view arrest totals, detainee countries of origin, alleged criminal charges, and suspected gang affiliations.
The site also links directly to the ICE online tip form, which the White House labels a tool for reporting “suspicious aliens.”
A White House official described the project as “a first-of-its-kind effort to draw eyeballs to the fact that the previous administration’s porous border didn’t just put families in border states at risk.”
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a Department of Homeland Security component, had registered Alien.gov and Aliens.gov in March, prompting speculation that the domains might be tied to Trump’s push to declassify UFO-related documents.
White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly offered only “Stay tuned!” at the time.
On Thursday afternoon, the administration teased the launch on X with a 14-second video of a searchlight sweeping what appeared to be a crop circle imprinted with the word “Loading.”
The launch comes weeks after Congress ended a 76-day partial shutdown of DHS, the longest agency-specific funding lapse in U.S. history, which closed April 30 when Trump signed a bipartisan funding bill.
ICE officers were shielded from furloughs throughout the lapse under a separate funding stream tied to the 2025 reconciliation law, and enforcement operations continued.
About 90% of the broader DHS workforce worked without pay during the lapse, while others were furloughed, degrading staffing across intelligence, cybersecurity, and other divisions.
By Jim Thomas | Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 10:22 PM EDT
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
