Stephen Miller’s appointment shows Donald Trump hasn’t learned his lesson on immigration :::: “Miller’s promotion guarantees an acceleration of mass deportations

It was never likely that Donald Trump – who rose to political prominence on the promise that he would expel immigrants en masse from the US – would dampen his agenda, even after voters rejected Republican candidates in the mid-term polls.

But the elevation of Stephen Miller – a zealous, anti-immigrant crusader who has been by Trump’s side since the president’s first term – is an ominous signal that the deportation machine that Trump has built up over the past two years will be driving ahead at full speed.  

Miller more than any single other person is responsible for unleashing a series of violent immigration raids across US cities this year and last, for sending hordes of masked agents in military gear through residential streets to round up undocumented immigrants. He has pushed the administration to all but shut down legal immigration as well. In his previous roles – as a deputy chief of staff and policy adviser – he has stuck close to Trump’s side and stoked the president’s most extreme instincts.

“The elevation of Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff signals a doubling down on the administration’s cruelest impulses,” said Faisal Al-Juburi, the co-chief executive of Raíces, a Texas-based humanitarian aid and immigration services non-profit. 

“Miller’s promotion guarantees an acceleration of mass deportations and of brute force unleashed within our neighborhoods.”  

Miller was a central figure in the first Trump administration's immigration policy, including the family separation policy and Executive Order 13769, which restricted travel from several Muslim-majority countries. As director of speechwriting, he supervised the writing of Trump's inaugural and State of the Union addresses. Miller is on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of extremists.  

It was Miller who came up with the legal framework of using the Alien Enemies Act to cast Venezuelan immigrants – including asylum seekers – as foreign terrorists associated with the Tren de Aragua cartel, and using that reasoning to expel them to a Salvadorian megaprison and to strike small Venezuelan boats.

During the first Trump administration, it was Miller who devised the “Muslim ban” restricting travel from Muslim-majority countries. It was he who designed the now-notorious zero tolerance policy of the first Trump administration – which separated more than 5,600 children from their parents and caregivers at the US-Mexico border. More recently, he’s pushed the administration to accelerate the deportation of undocumented children.

Miller, 41, who is himself the descendant of Jewish immigrants to the US and grew up in liberal Santa Monica, California, came to reject his home town, viewing California as a failed state that had been perverted by mass immigration. 

Eventually, he came to see immigration as a leftwing plot to undermine his vision of a traditional United States.

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