An uncle of White House adviser Stephen Miller says that he will donate to a group that provides aid and assistance to refugees in honor of his nephew’s marriage to Katie Waldman, press secretary to Vice President Pence.
In a Facebook post first reported by HuffPost, Miller’s maternal uncle David Glosser wrote that as many as 30 people had contributed nearly $2,000 to a fundraiser for HIAS, a Jewish nonprofit group that was established in 1881 to aid Jewish refugees.
“[HIAS] helped to rescue my family from Czarist oppression in the Russian Empire in 1906,” he wrote. “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; as were the 74 of our relatives who were shut out of America by the race/religion based immigration exclusion act of 1925 enacted by the ‘America First’ populists of the day.”
“Protect the refugee and welcome the stranger. They built America,” he reportedly added.
Miller is believed to be at the center of some of the administration’s most hard-line policies cracking down on immigration and refugees, including the travel ban.
Miller and Waldman got married over the weekend in a private ceremony attended by President Trump at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Glosser told HuffPost that he is in limited contact with his sister, Miller’s mother, and that he has not spoken to Miller since 2015. He sharply criticized immigration policies enacted by the Trump administration under Miller’s watch.
“The advancement of policies which legitimize the use of racial, religious hatred and fear is a danger to everybody in our country,” Glosser said. “The Trump administration pushing hatred in pursuit of political power is the kind of moral rot exploited by authoritarian regimes.”