Stephen Miller was apparently calling the shots in the Trump administration’s lethal military strikes on Venezuelan boats accused of drug smuggling. The White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser played a principal role in the operations, which were led by his homeland security council, The Guardian reported Monday.
According to three Guardian sources familiar with the matter, Miller’s influence over the strikes “at times” even “superseded” that of Marco Rubio, who is President Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser. This comes as Miller continues to consolidate power in the homeland security council.
Miller’s role, The Guardian notes, helps account for the shaky legal justification the administration has provided for the attacks: The Trump administration claims the president was using his authority under Article II of the Constitution, based on the notion that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a foreign terrorist organization. This recalls Miller’s repeated assertions that TdA is “running Venezuela” in his argument for deporting Venezuelan immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.
The revelation about Miller’s role also recalls reports that he mused about bombing unarmed immigrants in boats as an adviser in the first Trump administration.
Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who resigned in Trump’s first term and became a vocal critic of the president, recounted an exchange between Miller and the then-commandant of the Coast Guard—which Miller vehemently denies—in his book Blowback.
Miller, according to Taylor, asked the commandant why the administration couldn’t “use a Predator drone to obliterate” boats “full of migrants” in international waters. The commandant replied that it would violate “international law,” but Miller was interested not in “the moral conflict of drone-bombing migrants,” but “whether anyone could stop America from doing it.” He told the commandant, per Taylor, “I don’t think you understand the limitations of international law.”
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