White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has prompted a wave of outrage and mockery online Monday for claiming in comments about ongoing protests against federal agents that the U.S. has never tolerated “unlawful riotous assemblies” at federal buildings.
“When in our history have we tolerated unlawful riotous assemblies night after night around FBI buildings, or ATF buildings, or DEA buildings?” Miller said during an interview on CNN. “This is the textbook definition of domestic terrorism.”
As many online were quick to point out, one of the first actions of the second Trump administration was to cancel prosecutions or issue pardons to over 1,500 people who were involved in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Hill in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.
“We’re drawing a blank, let us get back to you Stephen,” the Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee wrote on X, posting a photo showing demonstrators with batons and shields trying to force their way past a group of police defending a door into the Capitol during the riot.
ICE officers have indeed faced violent threats during the second Trump administration, including a sniper-style attack on an immigration office in Dallas last month that killed two detainees, but no mass protest against the agency has matched the violence of the Capitol riot.
At least seven people, including a police officer, died in connection with the 2021 riot, while over 100 police officers were assaulted, one of the most violent attacks on law enforcement in U.S. history.
The White House and local officials have now offered differing narratives of the extent of violence and insurrection on the ground in Portland, Oregon, one of the Democratic-led cities where the Trump administration has deployed a large, military-style contingent of federal agents to bolster its immigration efforts and defend federal facilities that have faced protests.
Local officials, including the mayor of Portland, say months of protests outside an ICE building in the city have largely been peaceful, and that it was the arrival of large numbers of masked federal agents that inflamed the situation.
In rulings over the weekend in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to send National Guard troops into Portland, a federal judge seemed to agree.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, appointed by Trump in his first term, found the president had overstepped his statutory authority to send in the military and that White House claims of an ongoing rebellion in Portland were “untethered to the facts,” given police reports showing declining protest activity.
President Trump, meanwhile, has claimed Portland is “burning to the ground,” while Miller has described the ruling, which the administration has appealed, as a “legal insurrection.”
