GOP lawmaker calls on Trump to fire Stephen Miller

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Co.) called on President Trump to fire White House senior adviser Stephen Miller over the controversy surrounding migrant family separations at the U.S.–Mexico border. 

“The President should fire Stephen Miller now,” Coffman tweeted on Thursday. “This is a human rights mess. It is on the president to clean it up and fire the people responsible for making it.” 

Miller is considered one of Trump’s most hardline advisers on immigration. 

Coffman added that he is organizing a trip to Texas’s southern border, where he plans to inspect the facilities where migrant children are being held.

The Colorado lawmaker is considered a vulnerable Republican in a seat that the Cook Political Report has rated a “toss-up” ahead of November’s midterm elections. 

Coffman’s remarks come one day after Trump caved under intense bipartisan pressure, signing an executive order aimed at ending family separations at the U.S.–Mexico border.

The representative’s comments also come hours after he broke with other Republicans on Thursday, voting against the more conservative of two immigration bills being pushed in the House. 

The more conservative piece of legislation, proposed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), would have put an end to the diversity lottery program, provided funding for the border wall along the U.S.–Mexico border, and created an agriculture guest-worker program that would require employers to use a citizenship verification program. 

Goodlatte’s hardline bill failed in the House in a 193-231 vote. 

Coffman said that he did not support the more centrist compromise measure, which would have given a pathway to citizenship for up to 1.8 million “Dreamers,” provided $25 billion for Trump’s border wall and other security measures, and worked to prevent families from being separated at the border.