Donald Trump may want to blame the Democrats for his administrations decision to ramp up child detention at the Mexican border, but one of his underlings certainly doesn't. Adviser Stephen Miller has long had a reputation as one of the most anti-immigrant figures in Trump's White House (which is a high bar to clear) and in a new report out from the New York Times Miller explains that he helped push the president into the decision, and has no hesitation or second thoughts about a policy that has seen nearly 2000 children taken from their parents and put into detention centers in just six weeks.

The "zero tolerance" policy has been weighed by both the Bush and Obama administrations, but both presidents thought that locking up children was slightly more draconian than they were willing to be. In the account from the Times, reaction inside the White House to the policy is split, with some in the administration finding it "unfeasible in practice and questionable morally." Even Trump himself is apparently uncomfortable with the idea, which goes a long way to explaining why he so desperately wants people to hold someone else accountable for what is, again, his decision. Per the Times:

But Mr. Miller has expressed none of the president’s misgivings. “No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” he said during an interview in his West Wing office this past week. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”

It's no surprise that Miller has more resolve than his boss: Miller, a prime force behind the president's attempted Muslim ban, is an anti-immigrant ideologue while Trump has no discernible values beyond whatever he wants at any given moment. But what Trump wants is his wall, and the thousands of hostage children look to him like a way to get it.

While Trump is still insisting that his decision to take children from their families is actually the Democrats' fault, at least one Republican senator has undercut that message. On Sunday, Susan Collins of Maine came out against the policy, telling Face the Nation that she didn't support it but she also wouldn't back Democratic Senator Diane Fienstein's efforts to stop it. Because, you know, we can't stop locking up children without a wall first.

To be clear, this policy is a moral outrage. It's not some sort of abstract economic issue that can be put on hold until a backup system or partisan compromise appears. It's children being ripped from their parents and locked indoors 22 hours a day, permitted two 10-minute phone calls per week. It's parents and children alike being pushed to suicide attempts, with some success already. And it's happening by the deliberate decisions of people like Miller and Trump—with people like Susan Collins fully willing to enable them.