Perhaps, in a throwback sort of way, it was appropriate.
At the top of the letter ordering him to leave the United States Gabriel Megahy was not addressed as a person or individual or anything like that.
It was "Name of alien" before his actual name. Luckily his initials are GM and not ET.
But of course this is no laughing matter. The fact that the Belfast man, who has lived in the United States for half a century, is addressed as an "alien" comes as no surprise.
America is a country obsessed with aliens, be they the human sort or are believed to be from other worlds.
Congress, indeed, has been discussing aliens in the latter category of late but it's the human versions who are facing into a war of the worlds situation as a result of the latest rash of alien phobia to strike the American body politic.
An earlier version, of course, became a national obsession more than two hundred years ago during the President John Adams administration.
The Alien and Sedition Acts (there were four of them) were prompted by fears in Washington of an unholy alliance between French revolutionaries and the United Irishmen.
Keeping the "wild Irish" beyond the nation's seaboard frontier - thus averting a feared second revolution led by said wild Irish on what was now American soil - was a national priority.
History is full of irony of course. The French had helped secure American independence and the role of the Irish in sustaining American freedom down the years has been more than merely significant.
And yet we are still hearing about Irish "aliens." French ones too presumably, and beyond these two just take your pick when it comes to nationalities.
The "a" word, when applied, invariably has a dehumanizing and depersonalizing effect. The Nazis used it when they referred to "racial aliens" living outside the bounds of their so-called "People's Community."
During World War II Ellis Island, of all places, served as a detention facility for "enemy aliens." Granted, few likely objected to the description given the circumstances of the time.
But many Americans felt uncomfortable when President Trump, during the campaign leading to his second term, described all undocumented and illegal people in the United States as "criminal aliens."
With that description ringing in their ears perhaps it's no surprise that the enforcement actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is so lacking in subtlety, empathy, sensitivity.
The people they are rounding up have been dehumanized to the point that they might as well have come from outer space.
