calling humans aliens is NEVER normal, this has always been racist discriminatory, de-humizing language.
and yes ICE has used such languages for a while, and they also have done things for a while which by international law (mainly the parts conveniently not recognized by the US) are crimes, some very heavy crimes, too (like when they split very young children of illegal immigrants from their parents and sold them to orphanages)
You are very mistaken in your interpretation of the word "alien".
- being intentionally miss-translated to push political believes
- a lot of violent actions most western people would call barbaric and not acceptable today
and especially for the first point it's also not just the bible, many other religious texts have that problem, too
and neither change that today the word alien has not the annotation of "foreigner", but one which inherently de-humanizes the described group of people
Connotations of words change over time, that is normal, and it is possible that in the past alien really just meant foreigner.
But like I said elsewhere pretending that the connotation just means that today seems to me very hypocritical, at least close to no one under 40 will think about foreign people when hearing the word alien. Instead they will think of aliens, like extra terrestrial live.
No, it doesn't. You keep saying that, over and over, and people keep trying to correct you, over and over, and you keep not listening. It's you who has that connotation of dehumanizing associated with the word. You. And yes, I admit that some other people do, too. But it's your group, not society as a whole. And that means that all your outrage is misplaced, because the offense you're railing against is in your imagination.
But I will give you this much: I can imagine a future (maybe in 50 years, maybe in 10, maybe even in 2) where you are right, where that is the connotation of the society as a whole. But we aren't there yet, and I refuse to let one zealot on HN dictate my use of a perfectly reasonable word.
but getting hung up on this specific case in context of all the other things which happen which often are way more clear cut was indeed pretty dump
also to be clear I didn't down vote any of the comments to my comments, I might not agree with them but I found them still reasonable, but that (many having been down voted to a point of graying, at least temporary) means I'm not the only one on HN thinking this way. But at the same time this also doesn't show in any way what amount of people on HN thing this so I guess it's not really meaningful and shouldn't be used to support or disprove any arguments.