Van Hollen, Democratic Colleagues Demand Stephen Miller’s Removal from the White House

Today, U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Kamala D. Harris (D-CA) and 24 of their colleagues wrote a letter to President Donald J. Trump, demanding the immediate removal of Stephen Miller from his position as a White House senior adviser. 

The letter follows recent reports detailing over 900 e-mails, sent from Mr. Miller to far-right Breitbart News between 2015 and 2016, which confirm that Mr. Miller worked to advance white supremacist, anti-immigrant ideologies. In the letter, the senators connect the e-mails to specific immigration policies Mr. Miller has implemented in his current position.

In addition to Harris, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL),  Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Jack Reed (D-RI), Ed Markey (D-MA), Bob Casey (D-PA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Patty Murray (D-WA), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Gary Peters (D-MI), and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) signed the letter.

“Mr. Miller’s demonstrable white nationalist ideology has directly translated into your administration’s policies, which have been widely criticized for systematically targeting communities of color,” wrote the senators. “The Muslim ban targeted individuals of color and caused chaos at U.S. airports around the country, wreaking havoc on the lives of countless individuals and families. The family separation policy tore children from their families, resulting in widely reported mistreatment and human rights abuses of immigrants in detention facilities nationwide.”

The senators continued, “When someone takes an oath to work in the White House and earn a taxpayer-funded salary, they work for the people, not a divisive, harmful, and hateful ideology. These e-mails clearly show what is driving Mr. Miller. It’s not national security, it’s white supremacy—something that has no place in our country, federal government, and especially not the White House. Mr. Miller’s views go against everything we stand for as a country. They are unacceptable and unjust. Simply put, Mr. Miller is unfit to serve in any capacity at the White House, let alone as a senior policy adviser. We demand that you remove Stephen Miller immediately.”

The letter has the support of Southern Poverty Law Center, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Bend The Arc, Immigration Hub, National Immigrant Justice Center, Center for American Progress, and Families Belong Together.

The full text of the letter is available here and below:

December 9, 2019

President Donald J. Trump

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

We write to demand the immediate removal of Stephen Miller as your advisor. Recent reports confirm that he advanced white nationalist, anti-immigrant ideologies. Continuing to employ him as the senior architect of your immigration policies ensures that those policies discriminate against individuals of color to advance white nationalist ideals. He must be removed. 

According to over 900 recently published e-mails dated March 4, 2015 to June 27, 2016, Mr. Miller, who was an aide to Senator Jeff Sessions at the time, actively pressured editors and writers at far-right website, Breitbart, to publish white nationalist articles.¹ He drew his source material from known far-right websites peddling conspiracy theories, including VDARE and Infowars. When Pope Francis called for the United States to welcome immigrants, Mr. Miller proposed a story on “The Camp of the Saints,” an overwhelmingly racist “white genocide”-themed novel detailing an immigrant invasion designed to wipe out the white race. The book dehumanizes immigrants by, among other things, painting them as physically grotesque. It is simply appalling that a senior advisor to the President advanced parallels between this book and contemporary events.  

Alarmingly, this was not an isolated incident. Rather, it is just one of myriad highly disturbing communications. After a white nationalist killed nine African-Americans during Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Mr. Miller sought to protect Confederate iconography by targeting online shopping platforms that stopped selling Confederate flags. His e-mails regularly utilized verbiage commonly associated with the white nationalist movement, including the phrases “great replacement” and “new America.”

Mr. Miller’s demonstrable white nationalist ideology has been directly translated into your administration’s policies, which have been widely criticized for systematically targeting communities of color. The Muslim ban targeted individuals of color and caused chaos at U.S. airports around the country, wreaking havoc on the lives of countless individuals and families. The family separation policy tore children from their families, resulting in widely reported mistreatment and human rights abuses of immigrants in detention facilities nationwide. The rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has thrown the lives of hundreds of thousands of DREAMers into chaos and instability. Mr. Miller has also reportedly advanced your administration’s efforts to slash refugee admissions, limit asylum access for vulnerable populations, prevent extensions of Temporary Protected Status to those granted safety from humanitarian crises abroad, and disqualify immigrants who use public resources from receiving certain immigration benefits. Each and every one of these policies has a disproportionate adverse impact on communities of color and our country. Each and every one of them aligns with the white nationalist ideals espoused by Mr. Miller in his e-mails. 

Words matter. They can divide or bring people together and sow hope or hate. On August 3, 2019, a shooter opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 individuals in one of the deadliest hate crimes against Latinos in U.S. history. The shooter left behind a manifesto specifically citing anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant sentiments as the reasons he opened fire that day. This was just one of an alarmingly high number of recent hate crimes throughout our country. 

When someone takes an oath to work in the White House and earns a taxpayer-funded salary, they work for the people, not to advance a divisive, harmful, and hateful ideology. These e-mails clearly show what is driving Mr. Miller. It’s not national security, it’s white supremacy—something that has no place in our country, federal government, and especially not the White House. Mr. Miller’s views go against everything we stand for as a country. They are unacceptable and unjust. Simply put, Mr. Miller is unfit to serve in any capacity at the White House, let alone as a senior policy adviser. We demand that you remove Stephen Miller immediately. 

Sincerely,