Stephen Miller said he 'would be happy if not a single refugee' came to the US, according to ex-Trump aide

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Stephen Miller said he 'would be happy if not a single refugee' came to the US, according to ex-Trump aide

Stephen Miller

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Stephen Miller talks to reporters about President Donald Trump's immigration system in December 2017.

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  • White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller is quoted in a new tell-all memoir openly disparaging refugees, The Atlantic reported.
  • Miller is quoted in former administration aide Cliff Sims' memoir as saying he "would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched America's soil."
  • One of the few remaining staffers from Trump's 2016 campaign, Miller has been behind the administration's most controversial immigration policy and expressed anti-immigrant sentiments, which multiple reports, family, and friends, have pointed out is in contrast to his family's refugee background.

White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller is quoted openly disparaging refugees in a new book by a former administration aide, The Atlantic reported.

Miller, a notorious immigration hardliner who has been at the helm of President Donald Trump's most controversial immigration policies, reportedly told ex-Trump aide Cliff Sims he "would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched America's soil."

Sims also describes Miller as the "right-wing protege" of former White House strategist and far-right nationalist Steve Bannon who he says strikes the perfect balance between the "globalist/nationalist" divide in the administration.

Miller was previously identified as the driving force behind the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy that separated thousands of immigrant children from their families at the southern border.

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Read more: Meet Stephen Miller, the 33-year-old White House adviser who convinced Trump to start separating migrant children from their parents at the border

The adviser's backing of strict immigration policies earned public backlash from lawmakers, his former rabbi, and even his uncle, who called Miller an "immigration hypocrite."

Multiple reports have cast Miller's harsh views in direct contrast to his family background, as Miller's own family were asylum-seekers after escaping anti-Jewish persecution in Antopol, Belarus in 1903, according to Vanity Fair.

One of the few remaining staffers from Trump's 2016 campaign, Miller also writes the president's biggest speeches, including Trump's first State of the Union address. Before his administration position, Miller was a rising, outspoken star on the far right for years.

Sims, a former director of White House message strategy who reportedly worked on Trump's 2016 campaign, left the White House last May. Politico first reported in November 2018 that Sims would be releasing a memoir.

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"Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the White House," provides several unflattering pictures of top members of the administration, including "cartoon villain" counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and former Chief of Staff John Kelly who reportedly griped his role was the "worst f------ job I ever had."

"I suspect that posterity will look back on this bizarre time in history like we were living on the pages of a Dickens novel," Sims writes in an author's note as reported by The New York Times.

Sims added: "Lincoln famously had his Team of Rivals. Trump had his Team of Vipers. We served. We fought."

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