Should "Illegal Alien" Halloween costumes be available for sale?
Yes 71% (1,650 votes)

No 27% (628 votes)

Not sure 2% (51 votes)

Total Votes: 2,329


Backlash leads retailers to pull costumes from websites, but controversy unmasks a deeper problem.
Yvette Cabrera
Columnist
The Orange County Register
ycabrera@ocregister.com Comments 163| Recommend 11

It wasn't a trick or a treat. It was a genuine for-sale-to-the-public Halloween costume with an alien head, a green card and an orange prisonlike jump suit stamped with the words "Illegal Alien."

For many people it was so offensive, they marched straight to Facebook, Twitter, and then to their e-mail accounts and phones to express their outrage to Target, Walgreens, Walmart and other retail giants selling this or other similarly disturbing costumes.

Among them was a "Sexy Illegal Alien" costume, which included a sombrero, a metallic minidress with a poncho, and handcuffs, as well an alien mask with a bushy mustache. The message: Latinos are dangerous.

In phone calls and e-mails, consumers told these corporations exactly what they would do with their money.

"I won't go into another Target again because of it," says Suzanne Williamson, an administrator of the Wise Latinas Linked Facebook page, who called to complain to the Minneapolis-based company.

This was last Friday, on the heels of Hispanic Heritage Month.

By the following day, many of the stores, including Target, Wal-Mart and Walgreens, had removed the costume from their websites. Target explained that the costume had been inadvertently uploaded to their site, but was never intended to be part of its assortment of nearly 10,000 Halloween costumes.

"We don't think it's in keeping with our brand and that's why we made the decision to remove it," says Target spokesman Joshua Thomas.

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