Stephen Miller’s own cousin has disowned him for becoming “the face of evil” as the architect of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration crackdown.
Alisa Kasmer penned a lengthy Facebook post publicly severing her ties to the top Trump aide in July, just as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were carrying out hotly contested raids in Los Angeles, where she lives. Her post made fresh rounds on social media over the weekend.
Kasmer, who described herself as Miller’s cousin on his dad’s side, recalled growing up with and babysitting an “awkward, funny, needy middle child who loved to chase attention” but was “always the sweetest with the littlest family members.” She described him as “young, conservative, maybe misguided, but lovable and harmless.”
Images that accompanied the emotional post showed Kasmer and Miller going from young children donning turtlenecks and overalls to young adults dressed up in dresses and suits.
“I am living with the deep pain of watching someone I once loved become the face of evil,” Kasmer wrote. “I grieve what you’ve become, Stephen… I will never knowingly let evil into my life, no matter whose blood it carries—including my own.”
Kasmer points out that she and Miller were raised Jewish with stories about surviving pogroms, ghettos, and the Holocaust.
“We celebrated holidays each year with the reminder to stand up and say ‘never again.’ But what you are doing breaks that sacred promise. It breaks everything we were taught,” she said.
“How can you do to others what has been done to us? How can you wake up each day and repeat the cruelty that our people barely escaped from?”
Kasmer wondered out loud what happened to her cousin, who is widely credited with orchestrating the divisive immigration policy of both Trump administrations. Miller was also among the top Trump officials who set a lofty quota of at least 3,000 ICE arrests per day.
Though the quota has triggered tense clashes throughout the country between protesters and federal agents who were determined to deliver, data show that ICE arrests have fallen well below targets.
The Trump administration has consistently maintained that its immigration blitz is aimed at weeding out violent criminals. But official data show that immigrants with no criminal record make up the largest number of people in ICE detention.
“Where does this hateful obsession end? What are you trying to build besides fear? Immigrants were a part of your upbringing. Is this cruelty your way of rejecting a part of yourself?” Kasmer asked, musing that Miller’s evolution was “a perfect storm of ego, fear, hate, and ambition—all of it mangled into something cruel and hollow, masquerading as strength.”
“You’ve destroyed so many lives just to feed your own obsession and ego and uphold an administration so corrupt, so vile, I can barely comprehend it,” she went on. “Being this close to such deep cruelty fills me with shame. I am gutted. My heart breaks that this is the legacy you have brought to our family. A legacy I never asked to share with you, and one I now carry like a curse.”
In a separate Threads post over the weekend, Kasmer revealed that most of Miller’s extended family had also disowned him except for his immediate relatives, whom she said were supportive of the MAGA agenda.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Miller is no stranger to getting disowned by his family members. In 2018, his uncle David Glosser penned a scathing diatribe for Politico magazine where he was described as an “immigration hypocrite.”
Like Kasmer, Miller’s uncle—who is related to him on his mother’s side—underscored the irony of a descendant of immigrants crafting anti-immigrant policies.
“I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country,” Glosser wrote.
