Due Process, part 4. Stephen Miller Doesn't Understand
Honestly, I don't want to keep writing about due process. This is my 4th and hopefully last installment. I have a lot of other topics related to immigration in mind that I want to get to but when I see something like this statement below from White House adviser Stephen Miller, I have to respond.
“If you were an American falsely accused of wrongdoing on January 6th, it wasn’t merely difficult to get “due process,” it was impossible. The entire system was rigged against you. All of it.”
“Those persecuted Americans could only dream of the “due process” afforded illegal aliens.” Stephen Miller, 4/21/25
The January 6th defendants we're not persecuted. They had due process. They went before judges and juries. They had a chance to bring witnesses. They had a chance to cross examine. Many of the “falsely accused” pled guilty. And yet all of them were either pardoned or had their sentences commuted by the President who continues to talk about how persecuted they were.
Mr. Miller repeats the lie that they were persecuted and that their trials were rigged and supposes that somehow, the immigrants illegally rendered to a concentration camp in El Salvador had it better than the poor persecuted January 6 defendants. If they could “only dream of the ‘due process’ given to illegal aliens” there were surely some nightmares among those defendants.
This administration now controls the Justice Department and if there was any evidence whatsoever that a trial was rigged, they have the necessary access to that information. If truly “rigged,” we could expect they would bring forth some evidence of that.
In contrast the immigrants sent to the concentration camp in El Salvador had no trial. They were picked up by ICE, often in plainclothes and unmarked cars. They were put on planes not even knowing where they were going and sent to this mega prison where, in the words of a TIME reporter that was on the scene, “they became ghosts.”
The word that comes to my mind with Stephen Miller's tweet is evil. “Gaslighting” is too charitable a word.
A few weeks ago, I ran into a friend of mine who serves as President of a theological seminary. He asked me how I was doing and sometimes I'm not so comfortable with just giving the requisite “good” and letting it go at that. I wasn’t feeling it that day.
I told him “Not that great” and he, knowing what I do, said “Yeah you're probably in the middle of it right now.” And, without going into detail because the church service was about to start, I said “What's happening right now in the immigration world is evil.”
He paused for a moment and seemed struck by the severity of my language. But then said, “You're right. Let's call it for what it is. It is evil.”
Seeing the Stephen Miller tweet this week only reaffirmed my opinion of this. It is evil.