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This paper analyses the main linguistic and visual characteristics of sub-Saharan immigrants represented as illegal in a sample from the Spanish press, and the ideological consequences for the audience of the newspapers. The data consists of all the news items published on sub-Saharan immigrants in the digital editions of the three most popular Spanish newspapers, El País, ABC and El Mundo, from 1 June 2011 to 1 June 2014. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) and van Leeuwen's (2008) model for the verbal and visual representation of social actors will be used to study the main characteristics of the written language used to refer to sub-Saharan immigrants as illegal in three main ways: as victims, as heroes and as threats. In addition, Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) visual grammar will be the theoretical framework used to analyse the photographs published in the newspapers studied in order to observe the main visual characteristics that contribute to the portrayal of immigrants as illegal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]