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During a heated debate on Piers Morgan’s “Uncensored” YouTube program, Katie Miller, a far right former Trump administration official and wife to current Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, suggested that her co-panelist on the show, progressive commentator Cenk Uygur, should be deported.
During the program, Uygur accused Miller and her husband of spreading myriad falsehoods in order to advance President Donald Trump’s political agenda. “It’s very normal for a Miller to be completely and utterly lying,” Uygur said on the program.
This prompted Miller to baselessly accuse Uygur of attacking her and her family for being Jewish. Uygur did not make any comments regarding her family’s faith or ethnicity during the program.
Uygur had also posited on the program that criticism of Israel, particularly over its years-long genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, didn’t amount to an antisemitic attack on Jewish people in general.
During a back-and-forth that delved out of control, Miller threatened Uygur directly.
“You better check your citizenship application and hope that everything was legal and correct,” Miller told him, implying he could be deported based on any small error in that document.
Uygur was born in Istanbul, Türkiye, in 1970. He and his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was 8 years old, and he became a naturalized U.S. citizen shortly afterward.
Following the program, Uygur responded to Miller’s threat against him, mocking her for being unable to debate him in a more meaningful way.
“I hope I don’t get deported for winning a debate,” Uygur said on X, sharing the video of the short exchange in his post. “If Princess Snowflake is going to enter the arena, she has to understand there’s no crying to mommy. If she asks her husband to deport everyone she loses a debate to, we’re going to start running out of people.”
In a statement to HuffPost, Uygur noted:
It’s deeply ironic that the people who claimed to champion free speech are now trying to deport people who speak out against them.
Miller’s threat to Uygur is in line with the actual policy of the Trump administration, which has repeatedly threatened to deport students on visas who have been critical of U.S. policy, particularly the White House’s support of Israel during its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The administration has indeed sought to punish a number of individuals, including:
- Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student and green card holder who was detained by immigration officials after leading campus demonstrations against Israel’s genocide;
- Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who was detained after writing an op-ed in support of Palestinian rights;
- And over 600 students across 100 universities and colleges that have had their visas revoked over their pro-Palestinian views.
The Trump administration’s policies have received broad condemnation from human rights and free speech advocates.
“If we open the door to expelling foreign students who peacefully express ideas out of step with the current administration about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we should expect it to swing wider to encompass other viewpoints too,” wrote Sarah McLaughlin, senior scholar on global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), in an opinion piece published earlier this year. “Today, it may be alleged ‘Hamas sympathizers’ facing threats of deportation for their political expression. Who could it be in four years? In eight?”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has also blasted the administration for denying immigrants living in the U.S. their fundamental human rights.
“[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has illegally snatched multiple people from their homes and neighborhoods, threatened their legal status, and shipped them across the country with no notice to their loved ones or legal team — all in retaliation for constitutionally protected speech. … If the government can come after one of us for speech the administration disagrees with, they can — and will — come after any of us,” the organization wrote in a petition calling on Congress to stand up to Trump’s anti-free speech actions.
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