Robert Gamer: Author & Activist

The genocide of European Jews was not the Nazis’ opening move. At first, their strategy was forced expulsion: get Jews out of Germany, by any means necessary. But when the world turned its back—when doors closed, visas were denied, and refugee quotas went unfilled—genocide became their solution.

That history should matter. Especially to Stephen Miller.

Miller, the Trump administration’s former senior policy adviser and architect of its most draconian immigration policies, is Jewish. His great-great-grandfather, Wolf Lieb Glotzer, fled antisemitism in what is now Belarus and resettled in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where his family became a model of Jewish resilience and civic integrity.

So how does the descendant of a refugee become the voice urging America to slam the door shut?

Miller wasn’t just a hardliner on immigration. He was the driving force behind family separation at the southern border—a policy the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general said caused “intense trauma” in children. He helped engineer an executive order effectively banning immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries. He pushed arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants and sought to slash refugee admissions to historic lows.

And perhaps most disturbingly, Miller has shown open contempt for the constitutional rights of the people targeted by these policies. “The right of due process is to protect citizens from their government, not to protect foreign trespassers from removal,” he once said.

That’s simply false. The Fifth Amendment does not mention citizenship; it applies to “persons.” And the late Justice Antonin Scalia, hardly a liberal, affirmed that even noncitizens are entitled to due process in immigration proceedings. Our Constitution is not a selective document—it extends its protections to all within U.S. jurisdiction, regardless of status.

Undocumented immigrants are not invisible under the law. They are entitled to a public education. They have the right to workplace protections: fair wages, safe conditions, and freedom from exploitation. They are shielded against unlawful searches and detentions. These are not luxuries. They are legal guarantees.

Yet under Miller’s influence, the federal government treated undocumented immigrants as if they had no rights at all—only burdens to be expelled.

The irony is sharp: a descendant of Jewish refugees now champions policies that echo the exclusionary logic once used to keep his own ancestors out. In 1939, the U.S. turned away the MS St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. Some later died in the Holocaust. Today, asylum seekers at our border—many fleeing violence, persecution, and collapse—are treated with similar disregard.

To be clear: comparing U.S. immigration policy to the Holocaust is neither fair nor accurate. But it is absolutely fair to compare the underlying logic of exclusion, to examine how a government justifies who deserves refuge and who does not.

In 2016, only about 24% of American Jews voted for Donald Trump, according to Pew Research. Immigration didn’t even crack the top six issues for Jewish voters, a poll by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs found. In this, Miller stands as an outlier—politically and morally.

The message Stephen Miller has championed is clear: all are not welcome here. But that is not America’s promise. The greatness of this country lies in its pluralism, its rule of law, and its commitment to dignity—even for those without power or papers.

Miller’s policies may persist in spirit, if not in statute. But so too does the memory of those who were once turned away. If we forget that, we risk repeating it.