Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s senior policy adviser and the architect of many of his harshest immigration policies, told staff in a meeting last fall that restricting the ability of migrants to come to the United States is “all I care about.”
According to the New Yorker, Miller made the comments at a November 2019 meeting with officials from the Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Justice. The meeting was intended to discuss plans to prohibit migrants from applying for asylum at the U.S. southern border and to force them to apply for asylum in the first country they enter instead.
“One participant in the November meeting pointed out that El Salvador didn’t have a functioning asylum system,” the outlet reported. “‘They don’t need a system,’ Miller interrupted. He began speaking over people, asking questions, then cutting off the answers.”
At the end of the meeting, Miller was even more blunt.
“I didn’t mean to come across as harsh,” he told officials. “It’s just that this is all I care about. I don’t have a family. I don’t have anything else. This is my life.”
Miller is widely known as the architect of some of the Trump administration’s most racist immigration policies. He spearheaded the Muslim Ban, which restricts travel from countries with majority Muslim populations, and has played an integral role in the administration’s efforts to ban refugees from coming to to the United States.
He made headlines in August 2017 when he argued with reporters that the poem mounted on the Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus, was not representative of U.S. views on immigration because it was added to the statue later.
That claim is popular among white supremacists and has been pushed by the likes of David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and white nationalist Richard Spencer.
In November, Miller came under fire for leaked emails that showed him promoting white nationalist propaganda and materials from white supremacist sites. The emails, mostly between himself and a former Breitbart editor, were so alarming that a group of 27 senators sent a letter to the White House in December demanding Miller be fired.
The letter stated that the emails showed Miller was motivated “not [by] national security” but rather “white supremacy — something that has no place in our country, federal government, and especially not the White House.”
Miller continues to work in the White House. Trump attended Miller’s February wedding, which took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
