Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the think tank, said in an interview that he knew Mr. Miller from his time with Mr. Sessions, and that he had discussed immigration policy with him during two White House meetings.
Mr. Krikorian disputed the law center’s designation of the think tank as a hate group, but said he was aware that some content on VDARE was “outrageous.”
Mr. Miller, who delivered a 2015 keynote speech at one of the think tank’s events, is now one of the main speechwriters for the president, as well as Mr. Trump’s chief adviser on immigration policy. He often shares news coverage that he thinks will catch Mr. Trump’s attention, or perhaps draw his ire, according to several current and former officials.
In 2017, while searching for ways to illustrate the cost of resettling refugees, Mr. Miller urged State Department officials to embrace data from the think tank that showed it was 12 times more costly to bring a refugee to the United States than to help that same person in their own region. State Department officials declined on the grounds that the think tank report, which did not take into account refugee contributions through taxes, was flawed.
Mr. Miller also publicly used the think tank’s data to bolster his argument for the Trump administration’s initial travel ban that restricted travel from seven largely Muslim countries, a narrower version of which the Supreme Court upheld last year. He said he referred to the think tank’s analysis that 72 people from the those countries had been implicated in terrorist activity since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“We know there’s at least several dozen, perhaps many more than that, cases of terrorism from these countries that have happened in the United States in terms of terroristic plots, terroristic activity, material support for terrorism, supporting terrorism overseas, all different kinds of terroristic activity that’s been interdicted in the United States tracing back to these seven countries,” Mr. Miller said in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” in February 2017.
A host of fact checks found that the think tank’s claims were overstated — most of those people were not charged with crimes related to terrorism.