Rep. Ilhan Omar Calls Stephen Miller ‘A White Nationalist’

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Monday tore into Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, calling him a “white nationalist” and condemning his influence on administration policy.

“Stephen Miller is a white nationalist,” Omar tweeted. “The fact that he still has influence on policy and political appointments is an outrage.”

Miller, a strident anti-immigration hard-liner, is the architect of some of Trump’s most aggressive immigration policies, including family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border and a travel ban affecting immigrants from seven countries — five of them Muslim majority. Trump has been pushing in recent days to restore the family separation policy, according to reports.

Omar’s tweet Monday linked to a Splinter article that also called Miller a “white nationalist” and cited reporting from CNN and The Washington Post that linked him to Trump’s sudden decision to withdraw the nomination of Ronald Vitiello to be the next confirmed head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Miller reportedly urged Trump to scrap Vitiello, a 30-year veteran of U.S. Border Patrol, because he didn’t favor shutting down the southern border, which Trump has threatened in recent weeks to stem the surge of migrants seeking U.S. entry from Mexico.

Immigration experts have described Trump’s threat to close the southern border as shortsighted. John Sandweg, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said shutting down the border would do “absolutely nothing” to stop the flow of Central American migrants into the U.S.

“The administration sees an opportunity in this crisis,” Sandweg said. “The immigration folks in the administration have never liked the asylum laws. They don’t like the idea that the United States provides a safe haven for people fleeing political persecution.”

According to former White House adviser Cliff Simms, Miller once said he would be “happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched America’s soil.”

Miller’s uncle, David. S. Glosser, told HuffPost in August that he believes his nephew likely views other ethnicities as“ unworthy or inherently unsuited to life” in America.

The Trump administration’s policies, fueled by Miller’s far-right stance on immigration, “demonstrate derogatory religious, racial and ethnic profiling in its most primitive guise,” Glosser said.

Representatives for neither Omar nor the White House immediately responded to HuffPost’s requests for comment.