President Joe Biden has only been in office for a couple of days but he’s already reversed a raft of initiatives enacted by his predecessor. Most of those initiatives were repressive immigration policies, and as you might imagine, Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s former senior advisor, is not happy with them.
If you have been following our stories at PoliticalFlare and other sites, you already know Miller [1] is a white nationalist [2] who supports draconian immigration policies, and in an interview on Fox News, he was apoplectic.
“That is not who we are as a country,” Miller told Fox News host Laura Ingraham, according to Newsweek. [3]
Miller advised the former president on policy and was also the director of speechwriting for Trump, and during the interview, he asserted the executive orders signed by Biden were undemocratic.
“It’s about fundamental morality and decency, and yes, democracy,” he said.
“Joe Biden gave a speech yesterday about democracy and then hours later he suspends hundreds of pages of immigration law with the stroke of a pen,” Miller added. “That is not who we are as a country. That is just wrong.”
He followed that up with an attack on Twitter, criticizing the new administration’s plans.
“Today, @POTUS pledged to be a president for all Americans,” he wrote. “It’s unclear how all Americans are served by opening travel from terror hot spots, proposing a giant amnesty, or halting the installation of security barriers along the Southwest border.”
Today, @POTUS [4] pledged to be a president for all Americans. It’s unclear how all Americans are served by opening travel from terror hot spots, proposing a giant amnesty, or halting the installation of security barriers along the Southwest border.
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) January 20, 2021 [5]
Miller must really be in a mood because Biden has signed executive orders to stop spending on the U.S.-Mexico border wall, reversed the Muslim travel ban, and revised several other immigration policies.
Biden is also going a step further, saying in an executive order that he will reverse plans to exclude illegal immigrants from the 2020 census.
“Immigrants have helped strengthen America’s families, communities, businesses, and workforce, and economy, infusing the United States with creativity, energy, and ingenuity,” the order stated.
“My administration will reset the policies and practices for enforcing civil immigration laws to align enforcement with these values and priorities.”
Biden has issued 17 orders, memorandums, and proclamations so far, with six of those dealing with immigration issues that previously concerned Democrats while Trump was in office.
It’s not clear what Biden will do to reunite the 545 migrant children who remain separated from their families but on the campaign trail, he promised to sign an executive order to reunite them, Forbes [6] reports. Since he has obviously taken a number of positive steps, let’s hope he gets cracking on this.
The Obama administration also separated Central American children and families fleeing poverty, joblessness, and violence as they crossed the border into Texas in 2014, with sometimes as many as 4000 people per day flowing over the border, The Washington Post [7] reports. The massive numbers completely overwhelmed the Border Patrol, and frankly, many of these people were left in some very unpleasant situations — in some cases mothers with very young children were forced to deal with 90+ degree heat, with nothing to sit on except bare concrete floors and little more than bologna sandwiches to eat.
But unlike the Trump administration, which adopted a “zero tolerance” towards undocumented immigrants in 2018, the Obama administration attempted to remedy the situation by racing to expand its capacity for handling the flood of immigrants crowding the border and adapted infrastructure to handle mostly single, adult men, not families with children. However, even as the administration implemented improvements to handle the situation, it was still an unpleasant, nasty situation for immigrants caught in this web.
Which means that neither the Trump administration or the Obama administration get a pass from me. Obama was in almost every way a much better president than Trump, but this is something that actually happened and it should be remembered.
But it also should be remembered that Stephen Miller is and always will be, a massive creep and it is believed that he is behind some of the Trump administration’s cruelest immigration policies, including the Muslim travel ban, family separations, and the use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to capture undocumented immigrants.
It’s commendable that Biden is working for change and I hope soon these kids will soon be reunited with their parents.
Sweaty Stephen Miller seems upset pic.twitter.com/05ifoZ5vae [8]
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) January 22, 2021 [9]