Since we have citizens, we also have non-citizens, who are usually categorized as “aliens.” The category of “alien” already creates the allusion that a person does not belong, and that an immigrant is someone to be feared.

Because of this citizen/non-citizen binary, it’s crucial to have a conversation of what privileges a citizen receives, and how some of those privileges are relying on the dehumanization of non-citizens.

A non-citizen (alien) is someone who was born in another country, or someone who doesn’t have documentation of their birth, and therefore, no proof that they were born on US soil. A non-citizen can also be an adopted individual who hasn’t been naturalized, a refugee, a person seeking political asylum in the United States, or an undocumented immigrant (someone who doesn’t have a visa to be in the United States).

All of these people can be deported at any minute, be hunted by Immigration and Custom Enforcement, and be shipped to a private immigration facility that makes money per night that they hold immigrants, regardless of whether the immigrant is documented or undocumented.

As long as there are bodies inside the detention facility, the facility is making such high revenue out of inmates that they’re encouraged to continue detaining migrants for no reason, except that they are not US citizens.

Undocumented people, in particular, are those who are the most marginalized for not being citizens.

Because undocumented people don’t have citizenship, they’re considered invisible and non-existent, which means that the government can get away with torture, hyper incarceration, and deportation without the events ever making the news, because technically, the people suffering don’t exist.