In his quest to manufacture creative ways to bully immigrants, White House adviser Stephen Miller apparently spent months pushing a plan that would allow states to ban undocumented children from public schools. Bloomberg reports that Miller and others in Donald Trump’s orbit began floating the idea in 2017, and dropped it only after being repeatedly told that the plan would violate a 1982 Supreme Court ruling ensuring access to public schools. But the effort underscores the scope of the administration’s attempted immigration crackdown, not to mention the deeply-held prejudices of the person spearheading it.

As a teenager, Miller famously ended a friendship with a student at his Santa Monica high school over the friend’s “Latino heritage.” He also wrote of his frustration that some of his classmates “lacked basic English skills,” and remarked in an op-ed when he was 16 that there were “very few, if any” Latino students in his honors classes, “despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school.” Evidently, Miller has held onto this grievance in the nearly 20 years since, pressuring Trump’s Cabinet and the White House Domestic Policy Council to find ways to “limit enrollment” of undocumented immigrant kids from kindergarten to high school. Ultimately, Miller was told the plan would run afoul of Plyler v. Doe, and the Department of Education said it would not follow such a directive from the White House. “The memo wasn’t issued because the secretary would never consider it,” D.O.E. spokesperson Liz Hill told Bloomberg.

Still, the fact that the White House considered such a plan has infuriated immigration advocates who say it is “unlawful, unacceptable and un-American.” “The notion that we should punish little kids who go to school and pledge allegiance to our flag because Trump and Miller want to make America white again is incredibly cruel, dark and sinister,” Frank Sharry, executive director of immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, told Bloomberg.

Although this particular Miller plan never got off the ground, he and Trump have already put roadblocks in place to keep immigrant kids from attending school—including allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to arrest parents as they drop off their children. Miller has served as a lynchpin for many of these strategies, which have become a hallmark of the Trump administration. Aside from his acrimonious appearance at a press briefing in 2017, in which he downplayed the Statue of Liberty’s welcoming of “huddled masses,” the 33-year-old has been less visible than others in the Trump administration. But, as the Washington Post reported in a profile of Miller Saturday, that’s allowed him to wield more power behind the scenes, translating Trump’s belligerent anti-immigrant fantasies into cruel policy proposals, including the administration’s new rule denying permanent residency to immigrants it considers “likely” to use public services. “He’s burrowed down into the apparatus to make fundamental change,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told the Post. “People don’t even see a lot of the stuff he’s working on.”

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