The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit civil rights organization that documents the activities of hate groups across the U.S., added a new entry to its database of extremists: White House senior adviser Stephen Miller.
Miller was added to the organization’s website on Wednesday, with the SPLC noting that President Donald Trump’s trusted confidante “is credited with shaping the racist and draconian immigration policies of President Trump,” including the zero-tolerance policy that led to thousands of children being separated from their families.
Miller also shaped the White House’s early Muslim ban, pushed for the president to attempt to end the popular Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and advised moves to halt the issuance of green cards for immigrants using the coronavirus pandemic as a means to do so, SPLC said.
“Through the conscious use of fearmongering and xenophobia, Miller implements policies which demonize immigrants, regardless of their immigration status, in an apparent effort to halt all forms of immigration to the United States,” the nonprofit group adds.
Among the evidence demonstrating Miller’s white supremacist views is a Vanity Fair report in which an outside White House adviser lamented that the presidential adviser actually enjoyed seeing pictures of immigrants being separated from family members at the border when that policy in effect.
Beyond his anti-immigration stances, SPLC also mentioned Miller’s penchant for purging government agencies of workers whom he considers insufficiently loyal to his agenda or Trump himself.
SPLC also included specific quotes from Miller defending Trump as an authoritarian figure.
“The powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned,” he said in an interview on CBS‘ “Face the Nation” in February 2017, for example.
Although the “extremist” profile entry on Miller is new, the SPLC has long documented the Trump adviser’s extremism.
Late last year, the organization uncovered hundreds of emails from Miller to a writer at the far right website Breitbart News, which included recommendations of blog posts from white supremacist websites. After those emails were revealed, 100 lawmakers from Congress (none of them Republicans) called for Miller’s resignation from his role as presidential adviser.
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