Stephen Miller’s cavalier cruelty misses the whole point of Passover

Contributing Columnist
Jay Michaelson
April 9, 2025

This week, Jews around the world will retell the Passover story. Why? Because, as Exodus 22:20, Exodus 23:9, Deuteronomy 10:9, and Deuteronomy 24:17-18 all state, the “memory” of our people’s enslavement leads to compassion today. Here’s the version in Exodus 23:9: “You shall not oppress the stranger, because you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

This is the root of ethical monotheism: a shared (if mythic) recognition that we, too, could just as easily be the refugee, the stranger, the ‘other’ – and that, as a result, we have a moral imperative not to oppress the ‘strangers’ in our midst.

The Torah does not say, “Now that you are free, use your dominant position to ruthlessly dominate other people – after all, they’d do the same to you.” On the contrary, with power comes the commandment to resist that urge, and act with compassion instead.

Contrast all that with this recent statement by one of our nation’s deporters-in-chief, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller:

Friendly reminder:

If you illegally invaded our country the only “process” you are entitled to is deportation.

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) April 1, 2025

It’s remarkable how many transgressions of both Jewish and American legal principles are contained in this single sentence.

First, there are the falsehoods. Whatever illegal immigration is, it’s preposterous to describe it as an “invasion.” That’s a legally loaded term, since it justifies the Trump regime’s reliance on the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. It also plays well on the Fox News rage-and-paranoia machine. But it should be obvious what an “invasion” meant in 1798: an actual armed invasion of the new nation by an enemy power, as would soon take place in the War of 1812.

By way of parallel, consider the Jewish laws of war, which carefully delineate between “elective wars” (milchamot reshut) and mandatory wars (milchamot mitzvah), with different rules of engagement and duties to enemies. Terms like “invasion” aren’t empty of meaning; they have legal significance and are meant to be used seriously.

Second, there’s the word “If.” The whole point of due process is to ascertain, in an orderly way, whether someone “illegally invaded our country” or not. As we have already seen, disappearing people off the street and shipping them to a prison camp in El Salvador without any due process inevitably leads to mistakes, in which at least five completely innocent people (it appears) were swept up in the dragnet.

Those people did not do anything wrong. But the only way we can know that — the only way to satisfy the conditional part of Miller’s statement — is to have some judicial process that establishes it. That process may still be flawed; it may still convict innocent people. But it is the essence of democracy as opposed to authoritarianism.

It’s also how the general imperative of “do not oppress a stranger” gets translated into practice. Jewish law does not rest on generalities; in often excruciating detail, it provides for courts, elements of criminal and civil offenses, rules of evidence, and other elements of the due process of law. The memory of Passover becomes the legislation of Shavuot.

This is perhaps Judaism’s most distinctive contribution to Western civilization — the notion that law is part of holiness. It’s not something to be cast aside or mocked. It is how we are meant to live.

Of course, the rule of law also includes immigration laws, and if people break them, they can be held accountable. But that is only true if law enforcement is itself accountable, if there are ways to ensure that innocent people are not wrongly punished; if there is, in other words, due process for everyone present in the country, including those who are here illegally.

“No person shall… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” reads the Fifth Amendment. No person – not no citizen or legal resident. I think Stephen Miller knows this text. He’s just choosing to lie about it.

Finally, there’s the sneering, dismissive tone of the Miller statement which, itself, transgresses the spirit of Passover itself. Retelling this same story every year, over and over again; teaching it to our children; expounding, in the traditional Haggadah anyway, on every word in the text – what is it all for? Is it to reaffirm Jewish specialness? To retraumatize us each year with tales of antisemitism and persecution? It certainly can do those things.

But in light of the commandment referenced above, the Seder’s purpose becomes clear. Because really, there are two commandments in Exodus 23:9 and similar verses: not to oppress the stranger, and to know the heart of a stranger by remembering that we, too, were once strangers in Egypt. If we do this work correctly, the Haggadah says, we feel that we ourselves are experiencing the exodus — we feel as though it’s happening to us.

And from that “knowing the heart of the stranger” springs an attitude that is totally opposed to Miller’s cavalier cruelty. Again, this doesn’t mean that we don’t enforce immigration laws. It means that we don’t paint with a broad brush and demonize people, we don’t tear families apart, we don’t delight in the suffering of others (on the contrary, we even spill wine for the deaths of our oppressors), and we don’t ignore the rule of law in the guise of enforcing it.

It is, alas, part of human nature for the strong to oppress the weak, and for groups with power to demonize out-groups. But religion and ethics exist to hold those aspects of human nature in check and cultivate the better angels of our nature. That was true at the Red Sea, it is true around the Seder table, and it ought to be true in the corridors of power as well.

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