Stephen Miller's uncle donated to a refugee aid organisation as a "wedding gift" to his nephew, who designed Donald Trump's hard-line anti-immigration policies and whose coordination with right-wing media outlets revealed disturbing ties to white nationalism.

David Glosser posted a link to a spoof wedding "registry" website that mocked Mr Miller's recent nuptials by linking to wish lists from advocacy groups that provide aid to asylum seekers and immigrants in need. Mr Miller married Katie Waldman, press secretary for Vice President Mike Pence, on Sunday.

The registry — created by late-night news and satire programme Full Frontal with Samantha Bee — supports "organisations that help the most vulnerable among us, people whose rights are receding faster than Stephen's hairline", the website says.

Mr Glosser has frequently criticised his nephew's ideology-driven immigration agenda, which has included deterring asylum seekers from crossing the US-Mexico border by separating families and placing children in detention centers, as well as banning travel from several majority-Muslim countries and suspending a programme that allowed young undocumented people who entered the US as children to remain in the country.

In a Facebook post, he said he made a contribution to HIAS, a Jewish American nonprofit organisation which provides humanitarian aid and refugee resettlement assistance, a group that he said helped rescue his family from "Czarist oppression in the Russian Empire in 1906".

Inside California's largest detention centre















1/9 Backs turned: Adelanto faces complaints that it does not allow inmates sufficent visits Reuters

2/9 Barbed issue: the facility is the focus of protests by immigrant rights groups Reuters

3/9 ‘Aliens’: ICE agents are empowered to round up suspected illegal immigrants Reuters

4/9 World class: the facility is run by private operator The Geo Group Reuters

5/9 Limbo: people have gone on hunger strike to protest prolonged imprisonment Reuters

6/9 Colours: inmates wearing blue have no or minor criminal conviction – the rest wear orange or red Reuters

7/9 Domino effect: according to ICE, arresting ‘criminal aliens’ is a priority that predates Trump’s presidency Reuters

8/9 Uncertainty: Around 240 of the detainees at Adelanto are women Reuters

9/9 An ICE detainee rests his hands on the window of his cell in the segregation wing at the Adelanto immigration detention center, which is run by the Geo Group Inc (GEO.N), in Adelanto, California, Reuters

"Had our refugee forebears not been helped to emigrate to the USA, they and their children would have been murdered by the racial madness of Nazism", he said.

Mr Glosser added that 74 of his relatives were prohibited from resettling in the US following the Immigration Act of 1924, "enacted by the 'America First' populists of the day" and signed by then-President Calvin Coolidge.

Revealed in emails to Breitbart reporters and others while he was working for then-Senator Jeff Sessions, Mr Miller – the son of Mr Glosser's sister – frequently praised President Coolidge's measure, which implemented discriminatory "quotas" that could grant visas to only two per cent of the total number of people of each nationality in the US reflected in the US Census from more than 30 years prior. The law completely banned immigrants from Asia.

Mr Glosser said: "Protect the refugee and welcome the stranger ... They built America."

He added that each contribution to HIAS "plugs up a hole in the great wall of civilization that holds back the tide of cruelty that threatens our world".

"Remember to organize, communicate, and vote for qualified Democratic candidates so that we can at long last have a rational and compassionate route forward on this and so many other issues", he said.

He told the Huffington Post that "the advancement of policies which legitimize the use of racial, religious hatred and fear is a danger to everybody in our country ... The Trump administration pushing hatred in pursuit of political power is the kind of moral rot exploited by authoritarian regimes."