President Joe Biden is catching some heat from members of his own party for his use of the term “illegal” while describing the killing of former nursing student Laken Riley during Thursday’s State of the Union address.

The moment occurred during a terse exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) as Biden shifted his speech toward the White House‘s efforts to reform the immigration system ahead of the 2024 general election.

Greene had given Biden a “Say Her Name” button referencing Riley’s death during the president’s entrance into the House chamber, and as Biden discussed the border, she interrupted his remarks to demand he say her name.

“Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right,” Biden retorted, mispronouncing Riley’s first name in the process. “My heart goes out to you, having lost children myself.”

Almost immediately after Biden’s remarks ended, he received an outpouring of condemnation from Democrats over his use of the term, which the Biden administration has actively sought to stop using in reference to immigrants.

In 2021, the administration circulated a memo authored by the Citizenship and Immigration Services expressly urging government officials to replace “illegal” and “alien” with “undocumented” and “individual” or “noncitizen,” respectively.

“As a proud immigrant, I’m extremely disappointed to hear President Biden use the word ‘illegal,’” Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-IL) wrote on X.

“Let me be clear,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), also an immigrant, added. “No human being is illegal.”

“Disappointed that POTUS would use such dehumanizing right wing rhetoric to speak about immigrants tonight. No human being is illegal,” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) said.

“There was a lot of good in President Biden’s speech tonight, but his rhetoric about immigrants was incendiary and wrong,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) wrote in a lengthier post. “The rhetoric President Biden used tonight was dangerously close to language from Donald Trump that puts a target on the backs of Latinos everywhere. Democrats shouldn’t be taking our cues from MAGA extremism.”

Nevertheless, senior Democratic lawmakers sought to downplay Biden’s use of the term.

“President Biden laid out a comprehensive vision for fixing our broken immigration system and addressing the challenges at the border,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told reporters when asked about the incident at his Friday press conference. “He also acknowledged the horrific nature of the murder and, of course, emphasized the need more generally to keep our community safe.”

“He should have said undocumented. But it’s not a big thing. OK,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said overnight in an interview with CNN. “We usually say undocumented, but he said illegal. I don’t think it’s a big deal. Because I think his focus was on the sympathy for the family. It was a terrible tragedy.”

Interestingly enough, Republicans haven’t exactly come to Biden’s defense on the matter, but National Republican Congressional Committee press secretary Will Reinert pushed back on the Democrats’ concern with Biden’s rhetoric.

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“Extreme House Democrats’ focus on sending the DEI police to the West Wing, instead of preventing the murder of an innocent college woman, is the exact reason poll after poll shows Americans remain desperate for Republican leadership,” he said in a statement.