During an appearance on the Sept. 27, 2023 episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, former Trump advisor Stephen Miller outlined a plan to forcibly remove millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. According to Miller, the Alien Enemies Act could be used to deport immigrants without due process concerns, while the military could be tasked with the deportations.

Miller was one of the architects of President Trump’s draconian family separation policy and has promoted content from white nationalist websites.

“One of the things that has infected center-right, Vichy French Republicans is that deportation is radical,” Charlie Kirk said. “It’s not radical. Israel deports people all the time. I want a immigration system that Israel has. Why does Israel get a wall, get borders, why do they get to deport foreigners that commit crimes? Well, we don’t because we are not a serious country. We are a suicidal country.”

“Stephen, when I see the people come across the border it demoralizes me. It’s like this daily slit of my wrists,” he told Miller. “Every day somebody’s like slitting my wrists, this slow bleed of the Republic.” Kirk then asked Miller what Trump would do if reelected to “deport 30 million people.”

Miller replied that the military would be needed for such a monumental task, stating that, “In order to [carry out] a deportation operation of that scale, you would need to involve the U.S. military. Which is why President Trump often talks about the Eisenhower model, where the last time the U.S. military was involved in a large-scale deportation operation.”

Miller was referring to the infamous “Operation Wetback” policy which Trump had embraced in the past.

Miller went on to suggest that the U.S. government could deport people without due process concerns by citing the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Passed as part of the Alien and Sedition Acts, this Act allows for “natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government” who are 14-years-old or older to be “apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.”

As Miller explained, the Act “allows you to instantaneously remove any non-citizen foreigner from an invading country, age 14 or older.”

He acknowledged that this “doesn’t apply to the entire — all the demographics of illegal alien groups,” but that it would be “particularly useful in contexts where you have large amounts of gang members and drug dealers and other criminal offenders who are overwhelmingly gonna be over that age threshold.”

“And so that allows you to suspend the due process that normally applies to a removal proceeding,” he continued.

“And most people don’t realize, who haven’t worked in immigration enforcement, how bureaucratic that process is, or the fact that all illegal aliens have the ability under current practice and procedure not only to appeal their deportations, but if they get the right kinda lawyer and they get the right kind of judge, they can even get their deportation appealed into federal Article III appellate courts.”

He claimed that, because of this, “you need to then invoke extraordinary powers to overcome that” and “mobilize the U.S. military, state, federal, and local law enforcement to then carry out large-scale deportations across the whole country.” He added that you would “also need to build very large staging facilities to carry out the removals.”