Top Trump aide claims Biden would encourage child trafficking, echoing baseless QAnon conspiracy

Stephen Miller claims administration ‘kept families together’ as officials still unable to find parents of hundreds of children separated at US-Mexico border

Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller, on behalf of the president’s re-election campaign, has claimed without evidence that Democratic candidate Joe Biden would “incentivise” child trafficking under his administration, if elected.

The claim mirrors conspiracies promoted by the online-driven QAnon delusion that Democratic lawmakers and celebrities are engaged in a child-trafficking operation, a belief that has gripped millions of Americans and elements of the Republican party. 

Mr Miller, an architect of the administration’s hardline anti-immigration policies, claimed on a call with reporters on Wednesday that the former vice president would “incentivise child smuggling and child trafficking on an epic global scale.”

He also falsely claimed that the administration “kept families together” despite reports of hundreds of children who remain separated from their migrant families after they were detained at the US-Mexico border.

Mr Miller said “millions” of people would flock to the US under a Biden administration, which "would be the largest gift to traffickers, smugglers and coyotes that you could ever possibly conceive.”

Lawyers appointed by a federal judge to identify families separated by the Trump administration at the US-Mexico border in 2017 revealed that they have not tracked down the parents of 545 children – and two-thirds of those children’s parents have been deported

As part of a pilot programme ahead of the administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy, many of the more than 1,000 families separated from their children had already been deported before a California court had ordered that they be reunited, according to filings from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups tasked with finding them.

In his campaign call, Mr Miller also condemned “terrorist refugees” entering the US, as the Trump administration has sought to prevent migrants from Central American countries, many claiming asylum, from entering the US, with a sharp cap on admissions.

The Trump administration has significantly cut the numbers of refugee entries into the US to 15,000 a year.

Mr Biden has said he would raise that figure to 125,000, in line with the number from Mr Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama.

The president’s adviser slammed the proposal as a “radical outlier in the whole of human civilization.”

In a statement to The Independent on Thursday, the president’s campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh claimed that “Joe Biden’s open borders agenda would be a green light for human traffickers from countries around the world.”

He added: "When Biden says he will simply release illegal aliens into the country with no deportations, it is an invitation for child smugglers to ramp up their despicable efforts and exploit even more children. When you remove the barriers to illegal entry, you are actively encouraging people to do exactly that. It’s putting out the welcome mat for everyone who would break laws to enter the United States.”

Nationwide US polling shared exclusively with The Independent from HOPE Not Hate found that roughly one in 10 Americans support QAnon, with 4.6 per cent of respondents explicitly identifying as a “strong supporter” and 5.4 per cent as “soft supporters”.

But a third of Americans overall believe that “elites in Hollywood, government, the media and other powerful positions are secretly engaging in large scale child trafficking and abuse,” which is intertwined with QAnon beliefs.

More than 20 per cent of Trump supporters identify with QAnon – a statistically strong voting bloc that the report suggests explains his reluctance to denounce the movement, which the president and his sons, along with other prominent allies, have promoted.

“Despite claiming to not have heard of it, President Trump is increasingly courting QAnon as a key support base,” said Gregory Davis, from HOPE Not Hate’s conspiracy theory and disinformation unit.

“The hundreds of thousands of active QAnon supporters across the US identify themselves closely with the president and say they are willing to follow their leader, who they view as their country’s saviour, into battle,” he told The Independent.