The Trump administration has never seemed content to merely take a hard line on immigration. For all its incompetence, the White House also seems to value creativity in its cruelty, doing things like separating children from their parents as a “tough deterrent,” as John Kelly once said of the policy that Donald Trump reportedly wants to revive. A Washington Post report published late Thursday offers further evidence of this mindset. Per the Post, in recent months the administration has weighed a plan that would manage to both dehumanize undocumented immigrants and exact political revenge on Democrats, whose immigration policies the president has described as “treasonous.”

According to the Post, in the past six months the Trump administration twice attempted to muscle immigration authorities into releasing detained undocumented immigrants into sanctuary cities, so as to punish Democrats who’ve been critical of Trump’s draconian agenda. The plan, which has Stephen Miller’s fingerprints all over it, was proposed in November and in February, officials told the Post, and targeted places like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, in Nancy Pelosi’s district. The proposal was met with resistance from immigration officials, including those at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with whom Miller reportedly discussed the scheme. Ultimately, it was abandoned. “This was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion,” the White House told the Post in a statement.

Still, the mere idea has drawn condemnation, including from the House Speaker’s office. “The extent of this administration’s cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated,” Pelosi said through her spokeswoman. “Using human beings—including little children—as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable.”

The plan came to light thanks to two whistleblowers, who told Congress that the administration was considering using detained undocumented immigrants to punish Democrats amid a February funding standoff over ICE detention beds. (Trump’s opponents sought to limit the number of beds available, in an effort to rein in the administration’s immigration crackdown.) A congressional investigator who spoke with one of the whistleblowers suggested to the Post that the proposal more or less represented Miller going rogue, and that beyond him, there was little appetite for follow-through. “It was basically an idea that Miller wanted that nobody else wanted to carry out,” the investigator said. “What happened here is that Stephen Miller called people at ICE, said if they’re going to cut funding, you’ve got to make sure you’re releasing people in Pelosi’s district and other congressional districts.”

Of course, Trump’s staffing purge at the Department of Homeland Security indicates his administration has entered a new era in terms of immigration policy—one in which even figures like Kirstjen Nielsen, who oversaw the family-separation nightmare, are deemed too soft. Sure, the stunt was shot down the first two times. But in the meantime, Miller’s mandate has only grown.

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