David Glosser is a nice-seeming retired neuropsychologist who probably never did anything to deserve being related to Stephen Miller. But a twist of fate found him the uncle of one of the architects of Trump’s nationalist immigration policy, and Glosser isn’t sitting silently by. This summer, he authored a Politico op-ed decrying Miller’s policies and telling their family’s story of coming to the U.S. as refugees fleeing anti-Semitism in Europe. And now, just days before the midterms, Glosser is again talking to the press, defending the immigrants the Trump administration is determined to attack.

"This is a country of immigrants,” Glosser told CNN on Friday. "My family were immigrants, in fact we were refugees."

The Trump administration has used racism against immigrants as a tactic in the midterms. In the weeks leading up to the election, Trump has attempted to turn a caravan of desperate, hungry people into a national boogeyman, said he'll try to end birthright citizenship, and promised to embark on a likely illegal effort to restrict migrants’ ability to claim asylum. On Saturday, Donald Trump Jr. took to Twitter to post a campaign ad so racist that CNN refused to air it.

Glosser made an emotional plea on behalf of refugees, citing the atrocities visited on Holocaust victims, some of whom were denied asylum by the U.S. and were later murdered in concentration camps.

"If my ancestors had not immigrated to the United States when they did, if they had waited a few more years until 1924, the door would have been shut,” said Glosser. "My parents would have gone up the crematory chimney, I wouldn’t have been born, my sister wouldn’t have been born, and Stephen wouldn’t have existed.”

Gabrielle Bruney Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture.

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