Topline
Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that inspired protests around Los Angeles over the weekend are part of a crackdown spearheaded by the architect of President Donald Trump’s most extreme immigration policies, Stephen Miller—who is pushing legal precedent to meet Trump’s goal of mass deportation.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaks to reporters outside the West Wing on May 9, ... More
Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, referred to the demonstrations as an “insurrection,” and said they are “all the proof you need that mass migration unravels societies,” while highlighting footage of protesters waving Mexican flags in posts on X, painting a dark narrative that the U.S. is being taken over by undocumented migrants.
He attacked lawmakers in so-called sanctuary cities, accusing “the government of the state of California” of having “aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States,” writing “we will take back America.”
The arrests coincide with a more aggressive push from Miller for ICE to increase arrests and impose limitations on immigrants’ rights.
Miller recently set a new “minimum” arrest figure for ICE of 3,000 per day, double the quota set in January, and threatened to fire ICE field office leaders with the least amount of arrests, NBC News reported, citing unnamed sources who participated in a meeting with Miller last month.
In the meeting, Miller urged officials to broaden arrest targets to include noncriminal migrants, according to NBC, even as the Trump administration has defended its mass deportation push by claiming it’s targeting those accused of serious crimes or gang affiliation.
He recently promoted the idea of suspending habeas corpus to prevent migrants from challenging their detentions and claimed undocumented migrants do not have due process rights, conflicting with longstanding legal precedent.
Dozens were arrested in protests around Los Angeles over the weekend as demonstrations devolved into violent clashes with law enforcement and scenes of chaos, including police in tactical gear and burning vehicles. The protests fueled political tensions between the Trump administration and Democrats in California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who condemned Trump’s decision to send in National Guard troops, saying it was unnecessary and fueled the unrest. California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Monday he would sue the Trump administration for sending in the National Guard.
Miller is the author of many of Trump’s early executive orders to address illegal immigration, including a push to suspend birthright citizenship. He was a staffer for former Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., before he was hired by Trump as a speechwriter and senior adviser. During Trump’s first term, he was behind the travel ban that targeted Muslim-majority countries and Trump’s controversial family separation program, which Miller referred to as a “zero tolerance” policy. Miller has amassed even more power and influence during Trump’s second term, with the president telling NBC recently that national security adviser would be a “downgrade” for Miller. “Stephen is much higher on the totem pole than that,” Trump said.
He has made incendiary and unverified claims about the Biden administration’s immigration policies, including that it “trafficked 500,000 children into this country and helped them to disappear,” he told Fox News in April, referring to the exemption Biden offered from its asylum ban for unaccompanied minors—which human trafficking experts say actually helps prevent child smuggling. In the same interview, he previewed Trump’s executive order to “clamp down and crack down” on sanctuary cities “as never before,” calling them a “cancer on our democracy,” ahead of Trump releasing the order on April 28 that warns sanctuary cities their federal funding could be at risk. As a sanctuary city—which means the city’s resources cannot be used for federal immigration enforcement—Los Angeles is considered a clear target for Miller’s ire.
Miller has spoken openly about plans to use broad interpretations of Trump’s federal powers to bypass the courts and Congress to remove as many undocumented people as possible, telling The New York Times last year Trump “will do whatever it takes” to carry out the mass deportations. The administration has set a goal to deport 1 million people this year, a pace that would far exceed the arrest rate of about 660 per day in Trump’s first 100 days in office.
2,200. That’s the number of immigrant arrests ICE recorded on June 3, the most in a single day since the start of Trump’s second term, NBC reported, citing an unnamed source. Some of those arrested are part of ICE’s Alternative to Detention program that allows undocumented migrants determined not to be public safety threats to be released while their immigration cases are pending. Some immigration attorneys told NBC their clients in the program were asked to show up for their ICE check-ins early and arrested when they arrived.
Miller promoted white nationalist ideology in emails to Breitbart in an effort to steer its news coverage in the lead up to the 2016 election, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s HateWatch reported in 2019 after a former Breitbart editor, who has since renounced the far-right, leaked nearly 1,000 of Miller’s emails to the website. In them, he suggested racist literature to the right-wing outlet’s editor, including a French novel that promotes a “white genocide” theory and articles from white nationalist news sites, and he advocated against Confederate flag removals after the mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. The White House accused the SPLC of antisemitism in response to the report, as Miller is Jewish.
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