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Stephen Miller says Trump immigration policy wasn't 'inhumane', Mehdi Hasan says 'he's right, it was torture'

'For once, Miller is right. We shouldn’t describe what he did as "inhumane" - it was torture,' said Hasan

Stephen Miller, who served as a senior advisor to former president Donald Trump and was known for his hardline stance on immigration, has faced a backlash following his appearance on Fox News ‘Special Report’ on Monday, April 5. Miller, who has been a staunch anti-immigrant despite belonging to an immigrant Jewish family, said on the network that he found it “deeply insulting to describe what we did as inhumane”.

Mehdi Hasan, who hosts ‘The Mehdi Hasan Show’ on MSNBC and Peacock, lashed out at Miller on social media by speaking out on how the former Trump administration’s border policies have been assessed by experts. In a couple of tweets he wrote in response to Miller’s video, Hasan wrote: “For once, Miller is right. We shouldn’t describe what he did as "inhumane" - it was torture (per Physicians for Human Rights) and child abuse (per American Academy of Pediatrics). According to experts in their field, Stephen Miller and Donald Trump presided over torture and child abuse at the southern border.”

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The Twitterati supported Hasan's take on Miller with one saying Miller is "more inhuman than inhumane". Another user tweeted: "Thank the heavens these people are out of power." A third said: "Man with a long history of racism is insulted that we call taking kids from their parents with no plan to return them inhumane. Huh. Just the term "family separation" is inhumane. The cruelty was the point. It was meant to punish brown people seeking refuge." 

In February, Miller, who masterminded Trump’s controversial immigration policy of separating migrant children from their families at the US-Mexico border, called President Joe Biden’s policies “cruel” and “inhumane” while speaking on Fox’s “Ingraham Angle”. When he was asked to speak on the backlash that Biden faced over reopening a migrant facility in Texas to accommodate 700 unaccompanied teens, Miller said: “What we’re seeing here is the cruelty and inhumanity of Joe Biden's immigration policies.” He added that Biden’s immigration policies were enocuraging illegal immigration and the president only had himself to blame for the mess. 

Speaking with Bret Baier on Monday, Miller once again defended the immigration policies of the Trump administration as against those of Biden. He said: “We ended the process of human smuggling and trafficking that destroys lives, that leads to sexual assault, that leads to physical assault, and that finances the cartels, creating the cycle of violence and poverty. If the cartels had a vote, they would vote for, unanimously, the border policies in place under Biden.”

The 35-year-old further added: “It is inhumane to push men, women and children into the arms of traffickers, and it's also inhumane to have a policy that means more drugs get across our border because our border agents are dealing with the humanitarian crisis. Those drugs are going to end up in US schools and US communities, poisoning American children.”

Hasan recently slammed media for 'normalizing' Miller

It was only recently that Hasan took a dig at mainstream media for trying to “normalize” Miller, tweeting the “repugnant” far-right ideologue should potentially “be prosecuted” and definitely “be shunned”. Hasan spoke in connection with a number of former Trump aides taking up jobs as media experts after the conclusion of his tenure. Among them, Hasan was particularly annoyed with Miller doing the same.

“There is no shortage of odious people who gained power thanks to Donald Trump,” Hasan said  while speaking as a guest host on All In with Chris Hayes, adding: “But if you had to pick just one who should be pushed out of public life, who should hang his head in shame and never be heard from or taken seriously ever again, it would have to be Stephen Miller.” The MSNBC host also said that Miller’s immigration policies “more responsible than anyone for stealing children at the border”. He “targeted both legal and illegal immigrants” and made a mockery “of the very idea of America as a nation of immigrants,” Hasan said. 

Miller met former president Trump at the latter’s Mar-a-Lago resort recently and tweeted a picture of the meeting saying: “Just had a terrific meeting with President Trump!” He was roasted by the Twitterati over that meeting as well.