White House adviser Stephen Miller faced backlash from experts after he responded to the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. by suggesting that immigrants could never assimilate into American culture.
After an Afghan national was named as a suspect, Miller responded to a Wall Street Journal editorial that asserted that Afghan refugees "shouldn't be blamed for the violent act of one man. Collective punishment of all Afghans in the U.S. won't make America safer and it might embitter more against the United States."
"This is the great lie of mass migration," Miller wrote on X. "You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies. No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands."
One commenter said that Miller was responding to the shooting by "arguing that assimilation is fundamentally impossible and that certain cultures are not compatible with Western civilization."
Northeastern Illinois University Professor of Political Science William Adler noted that Miller's rant was "almost word for word what xenophobes in the 1930s and 1940s said about Miller's Jewish ancestors and relatives."
"He's so hateful he couldn't possibly recognize that of course," Adler added.
Willamette University history professor Seth Cotlar argued that Miller and many supporters of President Donald Trump "are the ones who failed to assimilate to America's post-WWII culture of multi-racial democracy & religious pluralism…and they are now using their power to destroy that once dominant (and still popular) American culture."
"This is so deeply at odds with the vision and history of America," University of Michigan Policy Professor Don Moynihan agreed. "Take pretty much any ethnic or racial group that are part of the American mosaic America today - they have all faced the same accusation. The moment these accusations are turned into policy are some of the most shameful in US history."
This is so deeply at odds with the vision and history of America. Take pretty much any ethnic or racial group that are part of the American mosaic America today - they have all faced the same accusation. The moment these accusations are turned into policy are some of the most shameful in US history
[image or embed]
— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) November 28, 2025 at 8:58 AM