Less than 48 hours after promising to reissue its editorial guidelines prohibiting the use of the terms “illegal immigrant” and “illegal alien,” CNN debate moderator Jake Tapper used the term in reference to undocumented immigrants in the September 16th Republican debate.

In addition, the network has refused to confirm its promise to drop the inaccurate language.

According to the Huffington Post, CNN has used the term “illegal immigrant” or “illegal alien” a total of 1,634 times, out of 1,995 times in the past year. CNN pledged to finally drop this language if our original petition was taken down - with the network’s refusal to publicly affirm this promise and its use on the network’s high-profile debate tonight, we are re-opening our campaign. We call on CNN to publicly confirm that it will no longer use the terms “illegal immigrant” or “illegal alien” in reference to undocumented immigrants.

The content of our speech leads to actions - the rising racist and xenophobic debate around immigrants has been followed by attacks on immigrants in recent weeks, and the term “illegal” is also factually flawed. Being in the U.S. without proper documents is a civil offense, not a criminal one. Many other leading media outlets, including the Associated Press and ABC, have already adjusted their editorial guidelines to prohibit the use of “illegal” when referring to undocumented immigrants. As an influential media outlet, we call on CNN to do the same. 

Tell CNN: Keeping your word matters as much as #WordsMatter.