C M Y K Yxxx,2019-08-18,A,001,Bs-4C,E1

VOL. CLXVIII . . . . No. 58,423 © 2019 The New York Times Company SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2019

WASHINGTON — When histo-rians try to explain how oppo-nents of immigration captured theRepublican Party, they may turnto the spring of 2007, when Presi-dent George W. Bush threw hiswaning powers behind a legaliza-tion plan and conservative popu-lists buried it in scorn.

Mr. Bush was so taken aback, hesaid he worried about America“losing its soul,” and immigrationpolitics have never been the same.

That spring was significant foranother reason, too: An intenseyoung man with wary, hoodedeyes and fiercely anti-immigrantviews graduated from college andbegan a meteoric rise as a Repub-lican operative. With the timing ofa screenplay, the man and the mo-ment converged.

Stephen Miller was 22 and look-ing for work in Washington. Helacked government experiencebut had media appearances ontalk radio and Fox News and a his-tory of pushing causes like “Is-lamo-Fascism Awareness Week.”A first-term congresswoman fromMinnesota offered him a job inter-view and discovered they werereading the same book: a polemicwarning that Muslim immigrationcould mean “the end of the worldas we know it.”

By the end of the interview,Representative Michele Bach-mann had a new press secretary.And a dozen years later, Mr.Miller, now a senior adviser toPresident Trump, is presidingover one of the most fervent at-tacks on immigration in Americanhistory.

The story of Mr. Miller’s rise hasbeen told with a focus on his pug-nacity and paradoxes. Knownmore for his enemies than hisfriends, he is a conservative fire-brand from liberal Santa Monica,Calif., and a descendant of refu-gees who is seeking to eliminaterefugee programs. He is a Dukegraduate in bespoke suits whorails against the perfidy of so-called elites. Among those whohave questioned his moral fitnessare his uncle, his childhood rabbiand 3,400 fellow Duke alumni.

Less attention has been paid tothe forces that have abetted his

rise and eroded Republican sup-port for immigration — forces Mr.Miller has personified and ad-vanced in a career unusually re-flective of its times.

Rising fears of terrorism afterthe Sept. 11 attacks brought newcalls to keep immigrants out. De-clining need for industrial laborleft fewer businesses clamoring tobring them in. A surge of migrantsacross the South stoked a back-lash in the party’s geographicbase.

Conservative media, once di-vided, turned against immigra-tion, and immigration-reductiongroups that had operated on themargins grew in numbers and so-phistication. Abandoning calls forminority outreach, the Republican

Party chose instead to energize itsconservative white base — heed-ing strategists who said the immi-grant vote was not just a lostcause but an existential threat.

Arriving in Washington asthese forces coalesced, Mr. Millerrode the tailwinds with zeal.Warning of terrorism and dis-turbed by multicultural change,he became the protégé of a South-ern senator especially hostile toimmigration, Jeff Sessions of Ala-bama. And he courted allies in theconservative media and immigra-tion-restriction groups.

Anti-Immigration ViewsBrought Miller to the Top

Behind Adviser’s Grip on Trump’s AgendaAre Greater National Forces

By JASON DePARLE

Stephen Miller has the ear ofthe president on immigration.

ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 22

Jeffrey Epstein, inmate 76318-054, hated his cell at the Metropol-itan Correctional Center. It wascramped, dank and infested withvermin, so Mr. Epstein, long ac-customed to using his wealth toplay by his own rules, devised away out.

He paid numerous lawyers tovisit the jail for as many as 12hours a day, giving him the right tosee them in a private meetingroom. Mr. Epstein was there for solong that he often appeared bored,sitting in silence with his lawyers,according to people who saw themeetings. While they were there,he and his entourage regularlyemptied the two vending ma-chines of drinks and snacks.

“It was shift work, all designedby someone who had infinite re-sources to try and get as muchcomfort as possible,” said a lawyerwho was often in the jail visitingclients.

Outside the meeting room, Mr.Epstein mounted a strategy toavoid being preyed upon by otherinmates: He deposited money intheir commissary accounts, ac-cording to a consultant who is of-ten in the jail and speaks regularlywith inmates there.

The jail was a sharp departurefrom his formerly gilded life,which had included a private is-land in the Caribbean, a $56 mil-lion Manhattan mansion and anetwork of rich and powerfulfriends.

But in his final days, Mr. Ep-stein’s efforts to lessen the miseryof incarceration seemed to be fal-tering.

He was seldom bathing, his hairand beard were unkempt and hewas sleeping on the floor of his cellinstead of on his bunk bed, accord-ing to people at the jail.

Still, he convinced the jail’sleadership that he was not a threatto himself, even though an inquirywas already underway intowhether he had tried to commitsuicide on July 23. The federal jailwas so poorly managed andchronically short-staffed thatworkers who were not correc-

Epstein FearedMisery of Jail

In Final Days

This article is by Ali Watkins,Danielle Ivory and Christina Gold-baum.

Continued on Page 18

NEW DELHI — More than fourmillion people in a northeast stateof India, mostly Muslims, are atrisk of being declared foreign mi-grants as Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi pushes a hard-lineHindu nationalist agenda that haschallenged the country’s pluralisttraditions and aims to redefinewhat it means to be Indian.

The hunt for migrants is unfold-ing in Assam, a poor, hilly statenear the borders with Myanmarand Bangladesh. Many of the peo-ple whose citizenship is now being

questioned were born in India andhave enjoyed all the rights of citi-zens, such as voting in elections.

State authorities are expandingforeigner tribunals and planningto build huge new detentioncamps. Hundreds of people havebeen arrested on suspicion of be-ing a foreign migrant — includinga Muslim veteran of the IndianArmy. Local activists and lawyers

say the pain of being left off a pre-liminary list of citizens and theprospect of being thrown into jailhave driven dozens to suicide.

But Mr. Modi’s governing partyis not backing down.

Instead, it is vowing to bringthis campaign to force people toprove they are citizens to otherparts of India, part of a far-reach-ing Hindu nationalist program fu-eled by Mr. Modi’s sweeping elec-tion victory in May and his strato-spheric popularity.

Members of India’s Muslim mi-nority are growing more fearfulby the day. Assam’s anxiously

Making India More Hindu, One Test at a TimeBy JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

and HARI KUMAR

A government worker in the Indian state of Assam collecting documents from people hoping to be added to an official list of citizens.SAUMYA KHANDELWAL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 8

Citizenship at Risk forMillions of Muslims

On the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first slaves in Virginia, The New York TimesMagazine and a special section explore slavery’s history and its legacy in the United States.

DJENEBA ADUAYOM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Kamala Harris was losing alti-tude, but even she did not knowthe extent of it. Few did, beyondher innermost circle with accessto a digital dashboard that re-vealed the shrinking daily intakeof dollars.

The Democratic senator fromCalifornia had burst into the 2020race with 38,000 donors and $1.5million in her first 24 hours. Her

average online haul was a robustnearly $100,000 per day in Febru-ary. It had eroded to just over$30,000 in the run-up to the firstdebate.

“I was honestly not aware ofthat,” Ms. Harris said in a recentinterview, asking her staff half-jokingly, “Why didn’t anyone tellme?”

They might not have briefed heron the details — that in June shetwice failed to crack $10,000 in on-line donations in a day — but the

decline was very much the back-drop to the first debate in June,her chance to turn it around. Ms.Harris’s exchange with formerVice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.over his history on race was likeinjecting rocket fuel into a starvedengine: She netted $4.2 million inthe following four days, $3.4 mil-lion online — about as much as shehad raised digitally in the previ-ous 10 weeks combined.

For the 23 people now running

Following 2020 Money, From Trickle to TorrentBy SHANE GOLDMACHER

Continued on Page 16

These three things are all true:The United States almost cer-tainly isn’t in a recession rightnow. It may well avoid one for theforeseeable future. But thechances that the nation will fallinto recession have increasedsharply in the last two weeks.

That is the unmistakable mes-sage that global investors in thebond market are sending. Longer-term interest rates have plungedsince the end of July — a shift thathistorically tends to predictslower growth, interest rate cutsfrom the Federal Reserve, and aheightened risk that the economyslips into outright contraction.

This is happening in an econ-omy that, by most indicators, issolid. The United States economyis growing at a roughly 2 percentrate and keeps adding jobs at ahealthy clip. There is no sign of thekind of huge, obvious bubbles thattriggered the last two recessions,the equivalent of dot-com stocksin 2000 or housing in 2007.

So if there’s going to be a reces-sion in 2020 — if the pessimisticsignals in the financial marketsprove correct — how would it hap-pen? There are plenty of clues, inthe details of recent economic re-ports, in signals from the markets,and in the recent history of reces-sions and near recessions.

President Trump’s on-again-off-again execution of the trade warwith China and other countrieshas fed uncertainty into busi-nesses’ decision-making. Corpo-rate investment spending is soft-ening, despite the big tax cut thatMr. Trump said would boost it.And the combination of centralbanks that are at the outer limitsof their ability to stimulategrowth, and an inward turn bymany countries, could make gov-ernments less effective at re-sponding to a downturn.

“It is potentially a self-inflicted-wound type of recession,” saidTara Sinclair, an economist who

A Recession Soon Looks Likelier.Here’s How One Could Happen.

By NEIL IRWIN

Continued on Page 19

Teenage girls in Myanmar fall victim tobride trafficking, spirited off to China,whose one-child policies have led to ashortage of young women. PAGE 6

INTERNATIONAL 4-11

Abducted, Drugged, MarriedTeenagers, many the children of mi-grants, are growing up in the shadow ofa national debate and its stereotypes.But at camp, “it’s way different.” PAGE 14

NATIONAL 14-23

Summer Camp on the BorderWhile David Chang is the restaurantempire’s lodestar, 30-year-old Mar-guerite Zabar Mariscal is the executivewho makes it all work. PAGE 6

SUNDAY BUSINESS

Momofuku’s Guiding ForceHow our nudes — and with them, ourbodies — have changed in the half-century since a naked man trudgedthrough the crowd at Altamont. PAGE 1

SUNDAY STYLES

Naked Progress

U(DF47D3)W+@!%!/!#!}

Ross Douthat PAGE 11

SUNDAY REVIEW

Printed in Chicago $6.00

Partly sunny. A few showers andthunderstorms. Flooding and dam-aging winds south. Highs in 80s tolow 90s. Thunderstorms tonight.Details, SportsSunday, Page 8.

National Edition