Stephen Miller was exposed in a new report Saturday as the "mastermind and enforcer" behind President Donald Trump's unprecedentedly "cruel and racist" assault on children in the United States
A damning analysis from The Guardian details a whole-government attack on at least 200,000 undocumented children who are denied legal immigration pathways and rejected from the country they believed to be their home.
“This administration has shown time and again that it has no plan for children other than to disrupt their lives and endanger them," one source told The Guardian. "They have no credibility to claim that they are acting with children’s safety as their priority.”
Miller has harnessed the power of at least five Cabinet-level departments, including Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice, according to the report.
Miller's influence has allowed ICE to access children's mental health records and other personal information without roadblocks, one source said.
A spokesperson from the White House, Lauren Bis, defended the government's actions.
“The Department of Homeland Security, the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the Homeland Security Council are working to locate and rescue these children," said Bis. "We are ensuring these children are reunited with their parents and families in their home countries."
But multiple sources discounted the Trump administration's common justifications to The Guardian.
“They are weaponizing that narrative [trafficking] because it makes them out to be the good guys," one source said. "Everything else makes it really clear that they’re not.”
Among those to speak out was U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who condemned Miller and the Trump administration for streamlining the mass exodus of young children.
“Instead of protecting kids from human trafficking or helping them reunite with family, Trump and officials at HHS and DHS are violating children’s rights [and] flouting federal law to hit quotas and satisfy their ideological crusade against immigrants," he said. "The result is significant harm and trauma to innocent children.”
The Guardian contextualized the policy by noting Trump once said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” – which the report noted, "drew comparisons to Nazism."
The significance of this context was confirmed by yet another source.
“There’s some real animus towards the kids coming from Miller and his acolytes," the source told The Guardian. "He sees the kids as, like, the future generation that will, you know, continue a multiracial, multicultural vision of this country.”