Donald Trump’s cabinet voted to separate migrant children from there parents in 2018, a new report claims. The vote was pushed by senior advisor Stephen Miller.
According to a new NBC News report, Miller was frustrated in May 2018 that children crossing into the U.S. illegally were not already being separated from their parents despite a so-called “zero tolerance” approach.
“President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Millerled the meeting, and, according to the two officials, he was angry at what he saw as defiance by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen,” NBC News says.
“It had been nearly a month since Jeff Sessions, then the attorney general, had launched the Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy, announcing that every immigrant who crossed the U.S. border illegally would be prosecuted, including parents with small children.”
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“If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” Miller reportedly told the cabinet.
One White House official said that any moral objections to separating children from their families “fell on deaf ears.”
Miller called for a vote and by a show of hands, a majority of the cabinet agreed to the child separation policy. This policy would go on to be widely condemned as cruel and inhumane.
Miller also hit headlines after a tranche of emails written by him was released, documenting his racist sentiments and extreme position on immigration.
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Darragh Roche is a journalist covering U.S. politics and media
