The Trump administration might have been being unfailingly correct in legal terms when the Department of Homeland Security set up a hotline to “assist victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens.” But really it just gave millions of Americans the opportunity to volley a huge ‘fuck you’ right back at ’em.
Only a day after it was launched, the hotline – named VOICE – has been rendered basically unusable, with hold times longer than Centrelink thanks to the fact chuckleheads across the country keep calling to report criminal extraterrestrials, of the Men in Black variety.
As soon as it was announced, social media users immediately made it their mission to call and claim that – I dunno – ALF stole their car, or E.T. perpetrated credit card fraud upon them. You know: real alien crimes.
In a statement to BuzzFeed, a spokesperson for DHS seemed slightly exasperated by the volume of prank calls they’d been receiving, while refusing to divulge the actual extent of the interruption:
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.
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.
In other statement, to Talking Points Memo, the recanted and claimed that it hadn’t interrupted service at all, despite the fact nobody seems to be able to get through at all.
“The VOICE line remains in operation and was not disrupted,” ICE spokesperson Bryan Cox told TPM. “As yesterday was its first day, I can’t give you any sense of whether this group had any impact at all on wait times or call volume because there’s no prior data to compare,” he added.
Of course, it’s extremely important to note that the VOICE line isn’t actually intended for people to report crime at all. In fact, it’s not that clear what the line is for at all. The press release on its launch doesn’t really do much to clear that up:
All crime is terrible, but these victims are unique—and too often ignored. 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.
Sure, it’s for victims of crime by “ILLEGAL ALIENS” [scare quotes added] but who knows why someone would call, or why this is enough of a widespread issue to necessitate its own hotline. Or even what kind of service it will offer you if you do call!
But that doesn’t matter, does it? The real problem is that the big cockroach alien from Men in Black is currently attacking me, and I need the damn hotline.
Photo: Getty Images.
