Reports Of Bigfoot, ET, Superman Flood White House Hotline Meant To Report 'Illegal Aliens'

AUSTIN, TX — What's in a name? An undocumented immigrant by any other name would be "illegal." But hark! Perchance not.

It's been a month since the Department of Homeland Security rolled out its hotline dubbed Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office (VOICE), created as a way for citizens to report crimes committed by "criminal aliens" that is an offshoot of the immigrant crackdown of the Trump administration.

But the VOICE hotline isn't having the desired effect. A growing number of concerned residents either taking issue with labeling fellow humans as "illegal" or those genuinely confused about the reporting protocol have taken to using the hotline to report aliens from outer space or mythical and elusive interlopers like Bigfoot. Some callers have reported Superman and E.T. who, although benevolent figures, are not of this planet, let alone the U.S.

Related story: White House Launches 'VOICE' Office To Report Undocumented Immigrant Crimes

“All crime is terrible, but these victims are unique — and too often ignored,” Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said at the time of the VOICE launch on April 26. “They are casualties of crimes that should never have taken place—because the people who victimized them often times should not have been in the country in the first place."

The folks at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency are not amused by the trolling.

"There are certainly more constructive ways to make one’s opinions heard than to prevent legitimate victims of crime from receiving the information and resources they seek because the lines are tied up by hoax callers," an ICE spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. "We will adjust resources, if necessary, to ensure that the victims for whom this office and hotline is intended get the info and resources they need."

Naturally, the idea of aiding crime victims is a shared ideal. The issue critics take is this latest manifestation of demonizing undocumented immigrants while exploiting their presence for political fodder. Other criticisms are more nuanced in their linguistic focus, centered on the age-old argument over terminology used to refer to those in the country lacking citizenship. Still others see the VOICE system as overreach, given that immigrants are exponentially less prone to committing crimes than natives—despite politicians' use of a handful of examples to paint a monolithic picture of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

Whatever callers' motives, it resulted in a 20-minute wait to report incidents on the first day. Things have calmed down a bit since, but reports of space aliens and other intruders continue.

"Just tried to call to report the theft of my tractor by space cadets," one caller wrote on Twitter. "On hold for 8 minutes had to abandon, will call again." Alexander McCoy, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, told BuzzFeed he called the hotline to report having been abducted by a UFO. He said he was put on hold for some 20 minutes before speaking to an operator who let out an audible sigh at the abduction report. Still, McCoy was told an "engagement officer" would subsequently reach out to gather more details.

"Don't forget to call 1-855-48-VOICE & let them know if you've seen the illegal alien Sasquatch (aka Big Foot), on the border," another wrote, helpfully posting a video snippet of the elusive, marauding beast.

While the phony reports could be viewed as a form of civil disobedience with a splash of whimsy, others have taken to challenging the need for a national hotline in more traditional methods. "DHS gives VOICE to prejudice," USA Today wrote in a recent editorial decrying the system. In its editorial, the newspaper points to longitudinal studies showing violent crimes committed by immigrants as negligible, despite the DHS secretary's claims to the contrary.

The chilling aspect of the system is its outright focus on a particular segment of the population, a tactic that hearkens to darker chapters in American history when certain groups were demonized to foment fear and distrust without supporting evidence of criminality to boot.

"Even if the facts showed otherwise, there are good reasons this country doesn’t create separate programs for victims of crimes by Jews or Catholics or African Americans or Asians or juveniles or short people," USA Today writes. "Categorizing criminals in this way is not going to provide any special comfort to victims. And, by underscoring and over-publicizing the acts of some members, such efforts are the first step toward assigning guilt to a group."

To hear Homeland Security Secretary Kelly tell it, violent crimes by undocumented immigrants are rampant. “Criminal aliens routinely victimize Americans and other legal residents,” he wrote in a Feb. 20 memo outlining the new VOICE office.

But the problem with that assessment is that it's not supported by facts. As USA Today noted, immigrants on the whole — undocumented or in the U.S. legally — are less prone to committing crime than native-born Americans, according to studies by researchers done over the course of many years and based on Census data from 1980 through 2000.

"One study using 2010 Census data found that incarceration rates among young, less-educated Mexican, Salvadoran and Guatemalan men, who make up a large part of the unauthorized population, are significantly lower than the incarceration rate among native-born young men without a high-school diploma," the newspaper found.

At vigils across the country in the advent of Trump's anti-immigration push, the focus is decidedly theological, discussion centered on various biblical passages promoting an embrace of the immigrant — effectively eschewing the "illegal" label in referring to fellow human beings.

"'Welcoming the stranger' is not an obscure message in the Bible," one author wrote in the National Catholic Reporter. "It's a core value. She then ticks off a sample of some of the Judeo/Christian teachings on this question:

• Deuteronomy 10:19 -- You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
• Leviticus 19:34 -- The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am your God.
• Hebrews 13:1 -- Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
• Colossians 3:11 -- In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.
• Matthew 25:35 -- I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

No less a figure than Nobel Peace Prize honoree and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel also takes issue with the "illegal" label in categorizing human beings. "You who are so-called illegal aliens that no human being is illegal," he once said. "That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?"

The White House previously stumbled in its first official attempt to posit pervasive criminality among undocumented immigrants. A short-lived listing of more than 100 jurisdictions deemed as non-cooperative of ICE efforts to root out undocumented immigrants was shelved after a flurry of complaints from law enforcement officials pointing out inaccuracies. (See: Travis, Williamson County Officials Dispute DHS Report On Immigration Detention Requests, March 22).

But VOICE remains. It remains amid a chasm of thought as it relates to the undocumented, painted by one camp as inveterate felons acting in united mayhem and by others as a hard-working segment of the population simply trying to achieve the American Dream.

Somewhere, among the cracks of that deep ideological fissure, the truth is out there.

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