How Stephen Miller's obsession with migrants could pose a public safety risk

So focused on deportations that the nation’s security apparatus appears to be tilted away from other threats to the homeland

Stephen Miller, Trump’s top adviser on homeland security, has been ranting in guest appearances on cable like one of the disturbed men I sometimes see on the streets of Baltimore: Their speech is loud and pressured, as if they are having a manic episode.

When I hear this in Baltimore, I assume it is the result of untreated mental illness, perhaps schizophrenia, and my reaction is sympathetic.

When I hear Miller go off about the threats posed by migrants to U.S. public safety, I fear for the country.

A man who rants on and on about such threats — and constantly characterizes migrants who engage in crime as “terrorists” — comes across unhinged, unstable and paranoid. Miller sounds like a frequent caller to right-wing talk radio; a man who engages in histrionics and spews hyperbole at his rate has no business being deputy chief of staff to the president.

If anything, Miller’s performances on television make threats to U.S. public safety worse: He is so outspoken and so obviously obsessed with migrants that the nation’s security apparatus appears to be tilted away from what recent intelligence assessments deem threats to the homeland — white supremacy and domestic terrorism, and cyber attacks from Russia and China that affect our infrastructure and economy.

In any kind of professional life, credibility is everything. Miller has none. Even without knowing Miller’s background, a rational person listens to his rants and can easily conclude that racist impulses, and not reason, guide his thinking.

A rational person would conclude that Miller exaggerates the threat posed by migrants who slip into the country with criminal intent.

No doubt that threat is there: The last assessment by the Department of Homeland Security in the Biden administration noted that drug smugglers and other criminals used the chaos at the border with Mexico to enter the country. Though that became less of a problem during Biden’s final year in office, it remains a concern, especially with regard to the traffic in fentanyl.

But the final report from DHS highlighted other threats that we don’t hear much about these days, given the Trump Regime’s obsession with deporting men they claim are criminals from South and Central America.

The DHS report expresses concern about terrorism related to the Middle East, stemming specifically from the Israel-Palestine conflict and the U.S. support of Israel. It speaks to cyber terrorism, sophisticated threats posed by China and Russia.

Quoting the report: “Adversaries almost certainly will continue to threaten the integrity of our critical infrastructure with disruptive and destructive cyber and physical attacks, in part, because they perceive targeting these sectors will have cascading impacts on US industries and our standard of living. China, Russia, and Iran will remain the most pressing foreign threats to our critical infrastructure.”

Regarding threats to the U.S. economy: “China likely will remain our greatest economic security threat because of its aggressive use of anticompetitive, coercive policies and theft of US intellectual property, technology, and trade secrets.”

Two years ago, then FBI Director Christopher Wray, a man not given to histrionics or hyperbole, characterized domestic terrorism as the primary homeland threat.

From his congressional testimony: “The greatest terrorism threat to our homeland is posed by lone actors or small cells of individuals who typically radicalize to violence online, and who primarily use easily accessible weapons to attack soft targets. … The top domestic terrorism threat we face continues to be from [domestic violent extremists] we categorize as Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (“RMVEs”) and Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremists (“AGAAVEs”). The number of FBI domestic terrorism investigations has more than doubled since the spring of 2020.”

Back in 2021, a few months after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland and then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified that the greatest domestic threat came from what they both called “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” Garland got quite specific in identifying the bad guys: “Those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”

We hear nothing about that threat from Stephen Miller (probably because he doesn’t see it as a threat but as an aspiration).

Meanwhile, since taking office again, Trump pardoned all the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 insurrection, including those who attacked police officers.

The priority of the Trump Regime is deportation — rounding up undocumented immigrants and flying them out of the country. In the case of the 238 Venezuelans flown to the terrorist prison in El Salvador, it was without due process. A Bloomberg examination of records found that just 10 of those men had felony or misdemeanor charges or convictions.

Trump and Miller continue to frame immigrants as criminals and terrorists, and the unleashed Miller continues to increase the volume, with defiance of what he calls the “rogue radical .. communist left-wing judiciary” that has stopped aspects of his master plan for deportations.

We are at a terrible point in the nation’s post-9/11 security posture, where racist obsessions, and not objective assessments, have tragically become the drivers of law enforcement policy and priorities. Our only hope is that reason and respect for the Constitution prevail in the federal courts and among at least seven of the Supremes.