During a 2019 White House meeting on asylum and immigration policy, senior policy advisor Stephen Miller said that limiting asylum in the US was all that mattered to him.
In an extended profile on Mr Miller published in The New Yorker, the vehemently anti-immigrant, alleged white nationalist, reportedly said: “I didn't mean to come across as harsh. It's just that this is all I care about. I don't have a family. I don't have anything else. This is my life.”
Mr Miller was engaged to Katie Waldman, vice president Mike Pence’s press secretary, at the time of the meeting. Ms Waldman and Mr Miller married at the Trump International Hotel over Presidents’ Day weekend this year.
The meeting at which he made the comments is said to have included representatives from the departments of state, homeland security and justice.
On the agenda was a new policy to limit asylum seekers from settling in the US by forming agreements with Central American countries that would force them to settle there instead.
Mr Miller is the face of the Trump administration’s harsh line on asylum and immigration.
He has a hand in all related policies, including family separation at the border and the travel ban.
Giving credence to the latest account of Mr Miller’s obsession with immigration, in August 2019, The Washington Postquoted a senior administration official as saying that Mr Miller is “singularly focused on how to get people out of the country”.
