In the United States, literally everyone breaks the law. Calling someone “illegal” as if their identity is defined by something done by literally every single member of society is just a thin veil over the wish to dehumanize the vast and terrifying Other.

By your logic, you are also “an illegal”, because you, too, have broken the law. Everyone is.

But you don’t use it this way. You use it exclusively to define foreigners as bad, as if the law’s opinion about a person’s actions is relevant to their identity.

Actions are illegal. People are not.