The cousin of Donald Trump’s immigration czar Stephen Miller has blasted the White House senior advisor over his policies that she said would likely have stopped their family from coming to the U.S. in the first place.
“We’re Jewish—we grew up knowing how hated we were just for existing,” Alisa Kasmer, who is related to Miller on his father’s side, told The New Republic.
“Now he’s trying to take away the exact thing that his own family benefited from: that ability to create a life for themselves, to prosper, to build community, to have successful businesses—to live a rewarding life.”
Miller has been one of the main drivers of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies, with previous reports claiming that he set targets for ICE agents of 3,000 arrests per day – almost 1 million per year.
Kasmer’s comments to The New Republic come after she publicly disowned him earlier this year, writing in a lengthy Facebook post that Miller had “become the face of evil.”
“I grieve a cousin I once loved. A boy I watched grow up, babysat, and shared a childhood with,” she wrote. “The awkward, funny, needy middle child who loved to chase attention, yet was always the sweetest with the littlest family members.
“I grieve what you’ve become, Stephen. And I grieve what I’ve lost because of it. I grieve your children I will never meet. I grieve the future family you’ve stolen from me by choosing a path so filled with cruelty that I cannot, and will not, be a part of it.
“I will never knowingly let evil into my life, no matter whose blood it carries—including my own.”
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin previously told Axios that since Trump's return to office, agents under DHS authority have arrested nearly 579,000 "illegal aliens” – a spike that has been credited to Miller.
According to government data obtained by the outlet, ICE has been arresting roughly 1,100 people per day in recent weeks, still some way off the administration’s goal.
The Trump administration initially insisted that only illegal migrants with criminal records would be targeted for its sweeps, but that standard has fallen by the wayside. A majority of those arrested reportedly don’t have a conviction, while agents are being encouraged to make “collateral arrests,” including undocumented people who happen to be with someone on a target list, according to Axios.
“You’ve destroyed so many lives just to feed your own obsession and ego and uphold an administration so corrupt, so vile, I can barely comprehend it. As surreal as it all feels, this IS reality,” Kasmer wrote.
“As much as I try to disassociate from it, the truth remains—being this close to such deep cruelty fills me with shame. I am gutted. My heart breaks that this is the legacy you have brought to our family. A legacy I never asked to share with you, and one I now carry like a curse.”
In her Facebook post, Kasmer also recalled how their Jewish upbringing emphasized the lessons of historical racial persecution and how they had been “raised with stories of survival.”
Miller’s ancestors first arrived in the United States in 1903, touching down in New York City having escaped the town of Antopol in a part of the czarist Russian empire that is modern-day Belarus. They had fled anti-Jewish pogroms.
“We learned about pogroms, ghettos, the Holocaust—not just as history, but as part of our identity. We carry the trauma of generations who were hunted, hated, expelled, murdered, just for existing. We were taught to remember,” Kasmer wrote.
The Independent has asked the White House for comment.
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