White House senior counselor Stephen Miller, a chief advocate of President Trump’s effort to end illegal immigration, is increasingly coming under attack by critics of the zero-tolerance policy at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Just this week, a media outlet published his White House mobile phone number in a bid to have people harass him.
And the New York Post’s White House correspondent Nikki Schwab reported that he was heckled while dining at a Mexican restaurant in Washington.
Today the critics took their campaign to another level, holding a press conference to slam “Miller’s Role” in the immigration debate. The email to reporters said, “PRESS CALL: Amid Child Separation Crisis and After House Votes, Rep. Jayapal, Experts, and Advocates Discuss the Troubling, Central Role of White House Aide Stephen Miller.” It was sponsored by the Clinton- and Obama-allied Center for American Progress.
Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center charged that Miller has associated with anti-immigrant groups. She cited the Center for Immigration Studies, which the Washington Examiner and several media outlets and Congress relies on for unbiased information on immigration.
They also put up a blog post attacking Miller titled, “Stephen Miller: a driving force behind the Muslim ban and family separation policy.”
The SPLC has come under fire for wrongly accusing people and organizations for being hate groups. It just paid a $3.3 million settlement after calling one group anti-Muslim.
Washington State Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who recently announced a plan for a mass protest on the White House at the end of the month, demanded that Miller be fired. “He is causing trauma to people across this country,” she said.
The lawmaker also called his “agenda … absolutely un-American.”
Miller has long been an advocate for enforcing immigration laws and was a top aide to former Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who pushed for an end to Obama-era open door policies. Sessions is now the attorney general and the loudest voice in support of Trump’s zero tolerance policy.
As critics have become increasingly nasty in their attacks on Miller, he has maintained a steady view of the border crisis. He told the New York Times last week, “No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement.” And he called the policy “a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”
That has been the message ever since Trump took office, one advocated by the retiring head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Thomas Homan. Just last year, he essentially spelled out the zero tolerance policy.
“If you are in this country illegally, and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should be uncomfortable, you should should look over your shoulder, and you need to be worried,” he told Congress, adding, “We’ll issue detainers to anybody in the country illegally. … Our priorities are criminals first, but if you’re asking me if we are going to put detainers on people that have not been convicted of a crime, yes we will.”
Updated at 1:55 p.m. to include the CAP press call.
