What Does VP Vance Mean When He Says "Potential Illegal Alien"?

This past Wednesday, a sniper opened fire at an ICE facility in Dallas killing one person and wounding two others before killing himself.

The Trump Administration have framed the incident as an attack against ICE and claimed the deceased perpetrator is part of the far-left. However, the persons killed and wounded were detainees who were helpless handcuffed. Given how VP Vance likes to "create stories" about hard-working Haitian migrants, who can say they weren't the actual intended targets? The surviving detainees remain handcuffed to their hospital beds.

What I find interesting are comments by Vice-President Vance. As per ABC News:

Vance offered condolences to those affected by the attack, saying it "looks like some of the detainees, in other words, some of the potential illegal aliens were some of those who were affected."

"Look, just because we don't support illegal aliens, we don't want them to be executed by violent assassins engaged in political violence either," Vance said.

That's kind of hard to believe when the victims are handcuffed and unable to protect themselves.

But what exactly is a "potential illegal alien"?

Was Vance unsure that the detainees might have been U.S. citizens or permanent residents who were wrongly rounded up? Or is someone a "potential illegal alien" because they have brown skin or speak Spanish?

In any case, the Department of Homeland Security did not see fit to release their names until yesterday. Killed in the attack was Norlan Guzman-Fuentes from El Salvador while Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez, a Mexican national who has been in the U.S. since early childhood, and Venezuelan born Jose Andres Bordones-Molina. Now that their names have been released, they have been downgraded from being "potential illegal aliens" to "criminal illegal aliens". 

Whatever the Trump Administration calls these people, it is clear that they view them as subhuman.