Meet Stephen Miller, the 32-year-old White House adviser who convinced Trump to start separating migrant children from their parents at the border

• White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller is on the front lines as President Donald Trump's administration butts heads with Democratic lawmakers over Trump's wishes for a $5-billion border wall.
• Miller was previously identified as the driving force behind the Trump administration's controversial immigration policies. 
• At 32 years old, he has been a rising star on the far right for years, making headlines because of his polarizing demeanor and statements long before his time in the administration. 

White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller has once again emerged on the front lines as President Donald Trump's administration butts heads with Democratic lawmakers over Trump's wishes for a $5-billion wall along the US-Mexico border.

Miller was previously identified as the driving force behind the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy that separated immigrant children from their families at the southern border.

At 32 years old, he has been a rising star on the far right for years, often making headlines because of his polarizing demeanor and statements long before The New York Times reported June 16 that he was the origin of the controversial policy.

One of the few remaining staffers from Trump's 2016 campaign, Miller also writes the president's biggest speeches, including Trump's first State of the Union address.

His hard-line positions and knack for policy have made him a force to be reckoned with. But before Miller became a major figure in the Trump administration, he was an outspoken, conservative activist in high school and college who worked on congressional campaigns.

Here's how Miller became Trump's right-hand policy man:

SEE ALSO: Stephen Miller had to be escorted off CNN's set after his interview with Jake Tapper went off the rails

DON'T MISS: A far-right darling in the White House was the one who convinced Trump the US should separate parents from their children at the border

Stephen Miller was born in Santa Monica, California, on August 23, 1985, to a Jewish family whose ancestors fled persecution in what is now Belarus. His family was liberal-leaning, but Miller says he became a stalwart conservative at an early age.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

In 2002, at age 16, Miller wrote in a letter to the editor that "Osama Bin Laden would feel very welcome at Santa Monica High School" because of the student body's anti-war attitude after 9/11. Soon enough, Miller began appearing on conservative talk radio in the Los Angeles area.

Sources: The LookOut, Univision, Politico Magazine

A video emerged in 2017 of his giving a student-government campaign speech at Santa Monica High in which he argued that students shouldn't have to pick up their own trash because there are "plenty of janitors who are paid to do it" for them. The audience quickly booed him off the stage.

Sources: The Washington Post, Politico Magazine

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source https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-stephen-miller-trump-speechwriter-immigration-adviser-2018-1