Civil Rights Groups Call For Trump To Fire Stephen Miller Over White Nationalism

Sanjana Karanth
Updated

A coalition of civil rights organizations penned a letter Monday asking the Trump administration to fire Stephen Miller after leaked emails published last week confirmed the senior adviser’s already suspected alignment with white nationalism.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights wrote to the White House saying that the administration will continue “to be responsible for the violence fueled by” Miller’s hate and bigotry as long as he is still working for the federal government.

“Stephen Miller represents white supremacy, violent extremism, and hate ― all ideologies that are antithetical to the fundamental values that guide our democracy,” the letter said. “Allowing him to remain a White House advisor is a betrayal of our national ideals of justice, inclusion, and fairness. We call on you to halt your own hateful actions and rhetoric and remove all hate enthusiasts from the administration.”

The White House did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on the letter.

The letter comes after the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization, published an investigation Nov. 12 from its Hatewatch arm reviewing over 900 messages Miller sent to editors of the right-wing website Breitbart from March 2015 to June 2016. According to Hatewatch, more than 80% of the emails “relate to or appear on threads relating to the subjects of race or immigration.”

In the series of leaked emails, Miller supported white nationalism; complained about backlash over Confederate symbols after the 2015 mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and promoted immigration policies once praised by Adolf Hitler.

SPLC reporter Michael Hayden said that in all 900 emails, he was “unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born.”

“In his role as your senior advisor, Stephen Miller has promoted hate speech spewed from neo-Nazis, bigots, and white supremacists,” the Monday letter from the civil rights coalition said. “His advancement of white nationalist ideology has resulted in policies ― and violent acts ― that actively harm immigrants, people of color, and marginalized communities.”

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told HuffPost at the time Hatewatch released its report that she was not aware of the investigation’s contents. She then tried to discredit the SPLC, calling the civil rights advocacy group an “utterly-discredited, long-debunked far-left smear organization.”

Miller is the mastermind behind President Donald Trump’s travel ban on multiple Muslim-majority countries, as well as the family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border that has left migrant adults and children separated, deported and/or detained in inhumane conditions, causing lifelong trauma for refugees seeking asylum in the U.S.

The senior adviser has also promoted ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and banning transgender people from serving in the U.S. military.

“The heightened anti-immigrant and anti-minority sentiments driving the policies of this administration are undoubtedly linked to the alarming rise of hate crimes and the highest number of hate-fueled murders in recent history,” the letter said. “Stephen Miller’s racist, deadly agenda is contributing to this violence and must be stopped.”

More than 80 members of Congress, all Democrats, have called on Miller to resign after HuffPost contacted every House member to ask their opinion in response to the Hatewatch report. Those calls echoed similar demands Thursday from leaders of the Black Congressional Progressive Caucus, Black Caucus, Hispanic Caucus and the Asian Pacific American Caucus.

“As documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Stephen Miller has embedded himself in white nationalist doctrine for years, including promoting racist propaganda from fringe sites like VDARE and InfoWars,” the Democratic caucus leaders said in a joint statement.

The civil rights coalition is made up of dozens of organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Families Belong Together, the Human Rights Campaign, the NAACP and the National Immigration Law Center.

Related Coverage

Leaked Emails Show Stephen Miller Is Exactly Who You Think He Is

White House Adviser Stephen Miller’s Racist Emails Leaked

Ocasio-Cortez Calls On Stephen Miller To Resign Amid White Nationalist Email Leak

Over 80 Members Of Congress To Stephen Miller: Resign From White House Now

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.