The Trump administration just released formerly classified files related to UFO sightings, and my neighbor Swamp Rabbit couldn’t be happier. He’s hoping the new information will confirm the existence of extraterrestrials he claims have landed in Bog Water Homes, the swampy development where we live. He thinks they want to befriend us.

“You’re crazy,” I told him. “Super-advanced aliens could land anywhere. Why would they choose some swampy place in South Philly? And why would they think we’re friendly?”

I referred him to a recent satirical piece by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who noted that we sometimes imagine space creatures as benign — think of David Bowie’s “Starman” or Steven Spielberg’s E.T. — but more often make dark assumptions about them:

If we look more deeply into our own alien stories, there’s a persistent plotline that aliens are evil and want to kill us all. I suspect those fears are based not on what we believe about aliens but on what we know about humans.

What we know is that many humans are afraid of Earth aliens — more accurately, the undocumented immigrant workers that MAGA enthusiasts call illegals. Our criminal president calls them rapists and murderers. His ICE thugs jail and deport them whenever possible and would probably treat outer space aliens better than they treat aliens from other countries.

“There’s more to it than that,” my crusty neighbor said. “MAGA peeps can’t live with illegal aliens, but they can’t live without ’em.”

He showed me an article about a white state senator in deep-red Idaho who’s on the outs with neighbors who depend on undocumented workers to help their dairy farms survive. She hopes her anti-immigrant stance will generate enough votes to keep her in office, even though it hurts her neighbors and her husband, who does business with the farm owners.

It seems the senator and her supporters are living in their own private Idaho, in little towns where they can’t admit the country must use immigrant workers and OK their presence here — more of them, not fewer — or suffer labor shortages and soaring rates of inflation. They can’t have it both ways.

It’s a story most mainstream media outlets are failing to tell as part of a larger story that includes the disastrous Iran war and tariffs that are hurting everybody but the super-rich.

“I’m bummed,” Swamp Rabbit said. “If I make friends with them space aliens I might try to hitch a ride when they take off for their home planet.”

Footnote: Today is Mother’s Day, a reminder that the thriving restaurant scene in Philadelphia, my hometown, is fueled by the cheap labor of undocumented aliens. In fact, “Philadelphia’s economic vitality increasingly depends on its foreign-born population,” according to recent studies. Does anyone other than the MAGA mob believe red-state economies aren’t just as dependent on foreign workers?