Stephen Miller claims Biden would ‘incentivize’ child trafficking

Stephen Miller Image by Getty Images

By Arno Rosenfeld October 29, 2020

White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller said that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden “would incentivize child smuggling and child trafficking on an epic global scale.”

Miller made the remarks during a call with reporters Wednesday, according to the Washington Times.

“Joe Biden would be the best friend that child smugglers and child traffickers have ever had in the White House,” Miller said.

Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s family separation policy, was criticizing Biden’s immigration policy. Administration officials defended the decision to take immigrant children from their parents at the border and jail them on the basis that it would deter families from making dangerous trips to the southern border.

But behind closed doors Miller, who has maintained close relationships with white nationalists, has offered a different justification for jailing immigrant children.

“If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” Miller said in a 2018 cabinet meeting, according to NBC.

Baseless claims that Democrats are participating in, or would encourage, child trafficking are also a clear allusion to the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory. The internet-based movement believes, among other things, that Democrats are running a global child sex-trafficking ring. The theory also targets George Soros and the Rothschilds and taps into antisemitic tropes.

One of the most senior Jewish officials in the Trump administration, Miller was disowned by his childhood rabbi in 2018. A series of major Jewish organizations in the United States have repeatedly called for Miller to be fired.

Arno Rosenfeld is enterprise reporter at the Forward, where he covers antisemitism, philanthropy, sexual misconduct and American Jewish politics. You can reach him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @arnorosenfeld.

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