White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's cousin, Alisa Kasmer, publicly disowned him in a post she shared over the summer that has resurfaced as President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown—which Miller orchestrated—accelerates.
Kasmer, Miller’s cousin on his father’s side, reminisced about their childhood, describing him as an “awkward, funny, needy middle child who loved to chase attention” but was “always the sweetest with the littlest family members.” She once regarded him as “young, conservative, maybe misguided, but lovable and harmless.”
But now, she made clear in her post, she is "living with the deep pain of watching someone I once loved become the face of evil," stressing that "I will never knowingly let evil into my life, no matter whose blood it carries—including my own.”
Kasmer described suffering two severe panic attacks in the aftermath of ICE raids in Camarillo—the worst in decades—and turning to writing as a way to process the emotional fallout. She expressed deep anguish over Miller, and confessed fear about sharing such raw feelings publicly.
She wrote:
"Last night, I found myself in a stage of grief I didn’t even realize I had been carrying. A grief that’s been living inside me for years—quiet, but constant. It comes from being so close to the root of something violent and vile in this country. I cried until I couldn’t breathe, hours of sobbing, gasping, shaking, sick to my stomach with a weight in my chest that was too heavy to fight."
"I was having a panic attack I couldn’t escape. Maybe it was ten years of anger and pain finally breaking through the surface. Maybe it was the most recent ICE raids turning my rage into sorrow. Whatever it was, something in me cracked wide open and has shaken me to my core."
"I think many of us are grieving. Grieving a world that feels more cruel than kind. A future that feels further away each day. I grieve for the country we could be… one with unmatched wealth, intelligence, and potential. A nation with resources to ensure everyone lives with dignity, equity, health, and safety. A nation with enough technological and medical advancements to be something truly extraordinary."
"But instead, those resources and that wealth are being hoarded by a few, poisoned by ego and power, devoid of empathy, starving the rest. Our privilege has been wasted on cruelty and torture, targeting the very people who make our communities whole—the hardest workers, the most vulnerable, the ones who carry this country on their backs."
"A society is only as strong as its most vulnerable, and ours are at their weakest. This is not by accident, but by design. Your design, Stephen."
She continued:
"Then there’s the grief I carry inside my own family- the most personal and painful. I grieve a cousin I once loved. A boy I watched grow up, babysat, and shared a childhood with. The kid I made fun of for his obsession with Michael Jackson and Ghostbusters. The awkward, funny, needy middle child who loved to chase attention, yet was always the sweetest with the littlest family members."
"A kid that reminded me of Alex P. Keaton, young, conservative, maybe misguided, but lovable and harmless. Or so I thought. But I was so deeply wrong. And the realization that I didn’t know you at all? It guts me. I grieve what you’ve become, Stephen. And I grieve what I’ve lost because of it."
"I grieve your children I will never meet. I grieve the future family you’ve stolen from me by choosing a path so filled with cruelty that I cannot, and will not, be a part of it. I will never knowingly let evil into my life, no matter whose blood it carries—including my own.
"I grieve for the power you’ve been given and for those around you who have enabled it. I grieve for the family I once loved, who lifted me up, who helped me through life, who made me feel safe, who now leave me feeling unsettled and even afraid. I grieve the realization that maybe I never really knew these people at all. My heart breaks every day, over and over."
Further addressing him directly, she said:
"But most of all, I grieve for those directly harmed by your actions For the communities here in Los Angeles, our shared home, for all of California, and the rest of the country terrorized by the cruelty you have brought upon us all. I grieve for the families shattered by cruelty dressed up as 'immigration policy.' Targeting hardworking, vibrant community members who are being terrorized for simply being brown."
"This was never about criminals. Or “illegal” entry. And now, with the passing of this bloated, grotesque bill—stuffed with more funding for ICE than most countries spend on their entire military, I’m left speechless."
"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 said her cousin's moral decline was akin to a “perfect storm of ego, fear, hate, and ambition" that turned privilege into a weapon. She expressed guilt and regret for not recognizing Miller's transformation sooner and wondered whether she could have intervened if social media had existed during their youth.
The pain is deepened, Kasmer noted, by the fact that they were both "raised Jewish":
"Stephen, you and I both know what that means. We were raised with stories of survival. We learned about pogroms, ghettos, the Holocaust—not just as history, but as part of our identity. We carry the trauma of generations who were hunted, hated, expelled, murdered, just for existing. We were taught to remember."
"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. 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?"
"We were taught to never forget where we came from. But you seem to have erased it all. And it devastates me. To be this close to the cruelty, through you, has left me ashamed and shattered."
"I try to fight your harm in every way I can. But it will never be enough. I can’t undo what you’ve done or who you have become. I can’t outmatch your reach or power. I feel helpless."
"The panic attacks haven’t stopped since the grief cracked open. The tears won’t stop, and the weight on my chest is constant. This isn’t about politics. This is about humanity. About decency. And you have lost yours."
She concluded:
"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. As surreal as it all feels, this IS reality. As much as I try to disassociate from it, the truth remains—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."
You can see her post below.
Kasmer's post resonated with many who offered their sympathy while condemning Miller for who he has become, as the architect of Trump's immigration policy.
Miller has pushed ICE to ramp up arrests as deportation numbers lag behind campaign pledges.
In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that Miller instructed agents to bypass the standard method of compiling suspect lists and instead focus on sites like Home Depot and 7-Eleven, where day laborers gather, to conduct mass arrests.
He later told Fox News that ICE should target a minimum of 3,000 arrests per day—far above earlier projections that prioritized individuals with criminal records—raising concerns about errors and wrongful detentions. As a result, ICE has sharply increased both the volume and scope of its arrests.
Amid protests in Portland, Oregon, Miller claimed authorities in the state are aiding “an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers” by refusing to aid ICE agents.
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