Citing White Nationalist Emails, Over 100 Democratic Lawmakers Sign Letter Demanding Stephen Miller's Resignation

More than 100 Democratic lawmakers joined dozens of civil rights groups and other critics in demanding the resignation of senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller a week after emails displaying the depth of the top Trump aide's racist ideology surfaced.

In a letter sent Thursday, 107 members of Congress--including Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)--wrote that emails obtained and then published last week by the Southern Poverty Law Center contained sentiments that are "incompatible with public service and render him unfit to shape any policy--immigration or otherwise."

The lawmakers wrote that Miller's extremist views have directly led to some of the most aggressive anti-immigration policies of the Trump era, including the Muslim ban, the policy of separating thousands of families at the U.S.-Mexico border, and quotas for arresting undocumented immigrants.

"Beyond the disturbing emails that Mr. Miller wrote, is the clear conclusion that he brought his dedication to white nationalism with him into your administration's discriminatory immigration policies," the letter states.

As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, tens of thousands of people have signed petitions demanding Miller's resignation or firing since the emails were made public. Civil rights organizations including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Never Again Action, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have also said Miller must leave the Trump administration.

The emails were written in 2015 and 2016 when Miller was an aide to then-Senator Jeff Sessions.

Miller wrote to editors of the right-wing website Breitbart News that the removal of confederate flags from Amazon's website in light of the 2015 shooting at a black church in Charlestown, South Carolina "defie[d] modern comprehension."

He also suggested that the U.S. should halt all immigration "like [President Calvin] Coolidge did" with the Immigration Act of 1924, claiming: "That is exactly what most Americans want after 40 years of non-stop record arrivals."

"We're being invaded and talked into tolerating it," Miller wrote in one message.

On social media, the hashtag #StephenMillerResign has gone viral in recent days:

On her late-night show "Full Frontal" on Wednesday night, comedian Samantha Bee devoted a segment to the calls for Miller's dismissal.

While noting that confirmation of Miller's white nationalism is hardly surprising, Bee said, "I still think it's important to take a second and say, 'Fire Stephen Miller right fucking now.'"

In their letter, the Democratic lawmakers pointed out that the extent of Miller's plans for Trump's immigration agenda may not yet be fully known.

"It seems likely that [Miller's] perfidious adherence to extremist ideology has shaped your administration in ways that are not yet public," they wrote to the president. "We refuse to tolerate white nationalism and xenophobia in the White House or elsewhere in the United States."