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Interfaith Open Letter: Stephen Miller Must Resign

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As a diverse coalition of interfaith partners dedicated to moral and humane immigration policies, we demand the immediate resignation of White House Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller. We believe that all people deserve to be treated with dignity, regardless of their immigration status. Our varied faith traditions mandate us to welcome the stranger, love each other, and protect the most vulnerable among us.
 
Faith organizations have a long and proud history of working to help immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers arriving in the United States as a result of war, displacement, and religious persecution. We have facilitated their resettlement, ensured proper care for women and children, helped them find homes and jobs, and prevented their potential exploitation. We work together to fight back against xenophobia, religious intolerance, and bigotry.
We firmly oppose the anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, and anti-asylee policies enacted by this administration, including (but not limited to) the Muslim ban, efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) wherever possible, onerous barriers for family reunification, the increased criminalization of immigrants, family separation, decimating of the nation’s refugee resettlement program, and repeated attacks on asylum. Stephen Miller authored many of these destructive policies and helped ensure their enactment via his network of anti-immigrant officials throughout the federal government. Further, these policies have been paired with heightened and unrelenting anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric coming from the White House.
A recent email cache published by the Southern Poverty Law Center prove that Stephen Miller is entrenched in white supremacist ideology. His fondness for the 1924 US law grounded in eugenics limiting non-white immigrants, his familiarity with the French novel Camp of Saints, popular among neo-Nazis, and his close ties to the Center for Immigration Studies (an SPLC-designated hate group) – these are but a few examples of Miller’s ideological touchstones.
At one point in history, harboring a white supremacist in the White House could harm an administration. Today, President Trump appears unbothered by his close official’s ties to white supremacy. This cannot stand. As organizations of many faiths, who feel love and respect where Miller advances disdain and hate, we call for his resignation immediately. 
 
Signed,
 
  • African American Ministers In Action
  • Ameinu
  • Anti-Defamation League
  • Bend the Arc Jewish Action
  • Bnai Keshet Church World Service
  • DC-MD Justice For Our Neighbors
  • Disciples Justice Action Network
  • Faith in Public Life
  • Faithful America
  • Franciscan Action Network
  • Habonim Dror North America
  • HIAS
  • J Street
  • Jewish Labor Committee
  • Keshet
  • National Council of Jewish Women
  • The Nation’s Mosque
  • NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
  • Pax Christi USA
  • Reconstructing Judaism
  • Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association
  • Society for Humanistic Judaism
  • T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights
  • Union for Reform Judaism

The Reconstructionist Network