White House aide and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller has long been itching for a public health crisis as a pretext to implement more of his anti-immigrant agenda, The New York Times reports. In a current pandemic that has killed tens of thousands of Americans and infected many more, Miller got his horrific wish—and has taken full advantage of it, instituting draconian policies that go around Congress and further walling off an already-decimated asylum system.
“Within days of the confirmation of the first case in the United States, the White House shut American land borders to nonessential travel, closing the door to almost all migrants,” the Times reports, including stomping on laws to quickly deport hundreds of migrant children back to possible death. “Other international travel restrictions were introduced, as well as a pause on green card processing at American consular offices, which Mr. Miller told conservative allies in a recent private phone call was only the first step in a broader plan to restrict legal immigration.”
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The report said that while the Trump administration has tried to pass off these policies as responses specific to the novel coronavirus pandemic, they’re “in large part repurposed from old draft executive orders and policy discussions.” In one example, when migrant children began to die in U.S. custody for the first time in a decade, Miller’s reaction was to exploit their deaths and close the border through executive fiat. But, the Times said, Miller was “talked down by cabinet secretaries and lawyers who argued that the public health situation at the time did not provide sufficient legal basis for such a proclamation.”
But Miller has found just the justification he’s needed in COVID-19, turning his nose up at “decades-long practices under laws meant to protect children from human trafficking and offer them a chance to seek asylum in a U.S. immigration court,” Reuters reported last month. “Under the new rules, U.S. officials can quickly remove people without standard immigration proceedings.” Miller has also reportedly sought changes that would force children to be kept in Border Patrol facilities for longer than the 72-hour limit set by law. But when a government watchdog found that officials have already done this and no one was held accountable, why would Miller worry about the law?
Researchers have noted Miller’s ties to extremist anti-immigrant groups that have now found a home in a Trump administration that truly doesn’t give a shit how many people die in this pandemic, particularly if they’re brown or Black and work in a meatpacking plant. Leaked emails last year revealed Miller promoted the work of anti-immigrant hate group Center for Immigration Studies dozens of times; the founder of that group was John Tanton, “a staunch supporter of dangerous anti-immigrant ideologies grounded in eugenics and population control,” the Center for American Progress said. “Tanton is known in the anti-immigrant movement for writing ‘The Case for Passive Eugenics.’”
The Trump administration’s green card ban is supposedly a temporary measure that it says will last 60 days, but as voices have warned, other racist measures in history were also temporary—until they weren’t:
“It is despicable and unsurprising,” immigrant rights advocate Frank Sharry said in a statement. “Saving lives isn’t Miller’s priority, exploiting a deadly pandemic to advance Trump’s cruel and cynical agenda is. If Miller and the Trump administration actually cared about the health consequences of their policymaking, they wouldn’t be keeping ICE detainees locked up in COVID-19 hotspots, transmitting the virus to countries like Guatemala and Haiti in deportation flights, and expelling unaccompanied minors and asylum-seekers.”
Remember that November isn’t just about kicking the impeached president out of office—it’s also about evicting a henchman who has implemented some of the most destructive and evil policies of our modern history. “Trump only cares about re-election and reinforcing his xenophobic bona fides with his base to do so,” Sharry continued. “Miller only cares about advancing his nativist agenda at all costs. It’s a dark and vicious cycle, and the mounting body count that results should be laid at their feet.”
