Senior Advisor to the President Stephen Miller is the driving force behind what he calls the “simple decision” to implement the nuclear option policy of ripping migrant children – some just 13 months old or less – from their undocumented parents’ arms.
The New York Times reports that “for George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the idea of crying children torn from their parents’ arms was simply too inhumane — and too politically perilous — to embrace as policy.”
And while then-Trump Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, now the president’s embattled Chief of Staff, had last year supported the idea of separating children from their parents, even Trump allegedly decided it was a policy too politically perilous to enact.
“But advocates inside the administration, most prominently Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s senior policy adviser, never gave up on the idea,” the Times notes. “Last month, facing a sharp uptick in illegal border crossings, Mr. Trump ordered a new effort to criminally prosecute anyone who crossed the border unlawfully — with few exceptions for parents traveling with their minor children.”
The Times adds that “Mr. Miller has expressed none of the president’s misgivings.”
“No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” he said during an interview in his West Wing office this past week. “It was 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.”
For those asking, “who is Stephen Miller?” perhaps this clip will remind you:
Miller is closely tied to the so-called “Alt-Right,” a loosely formed cadre of white supremacists, white nationalists, anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant activists, and racists, many of whom have taken to call themselves “deplorables,” after Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign comments.
“And now Mr. Trump faces the consequences. With thousands of children detained in makeshift shelters, his spokesmen this past week had to deny accusations that the administration was acting like Nazis.”
The Trump administration over the past six weeks has torn 2000 children away from their parents, even – if not mostly – those from Central America who are seeking asylum. Seeking asylum is perfectly legal under U.S. law.
Parts of Central America, including Honduras and Guatemala, have been dubbed the “murder capital of the world.”
On the list of countries with the highest murder rates in the world, Mexico comes in at number 20. Guatemala is number five, and Honduras is number one.
More than 90 people out of every 100,000 in Honduras are murdered annually. In the United States, the murder rate is just over five people out of every 100,000 annually.
Meanwhile, on Father’s Day weekend, millions of Americans are just beginning to grasp – with outrage and horror – that “acting like Nazis” is exactly what their president and his administration are doing.
UPDATE: 10:24 PM –
A more recent number puts the Honduran murder rate at 42.8 per 100,000 people.