A Who’s Who of the Incoming Trump Administration: Stephen Miller

This past November, Donald Trump announced Stephen Miller will serve as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and as Homeland Security Advisor for his administration. Miller, one of Trump’s closest allies, played a key role in his 2016 campaign and served as an advisor during Trump’s first term in office. Miller was the architect of Trump’s most devastating and cruel immigration policies, including ripping thousands of children from their parents arms through his family separation policy, the Muslim ban, and the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle DACA protections for Dreamers. Miller’s career is rooted in far-right ideology and anti-immigrant extremism, and he will enter his role in the Trump administration as a staunch advocate for mass detention and deportation of immigrants across the country and the rollback of asylum and refugee programs. Since emerging as a key figure in Trump’s policy team, Miller has doubled down on his extremist agenda, vowing to guide the administration in carrying out their mass deportation agenda, calling to end birthright citizenship, and planning to strip protections from millions. 

Stephen Miller’s past actions on immigration underscore his commitment to destroying the U.S. immigration system and upending the lives of millions of immigrants, all to carry out the cruel and inhumane agenda of the far right:

• Miller has vowed the Trump administration will begin a “denaturalization process,” ending birthright citizenship and stripping citizenship from millions. In a tweet, Miller stated “we started a new denaturalization project under Trump. In 2025, expect it to be turbocharged.”
• Miller has promised to implement Trump’s mass deportation plan, vowing to deploy military and federal law enforcement into communities to carry out mass detentions and deportation, tearing families and communities apart. He has described building internment camps to detain immigrants and families, explaining Trump’s plan “involves building large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas because of the existing infrastructure there, right, the roads, the jeeps, the aircraft, the personnel” (The Charlie Kirk Show).
• As a leading architect of Trump’s family separation policy, Miller was responsible for ripping over 5,460 children from their parents’ arms. He continues to advocate for the policy and has vowed to reimplement family separation under Trump’s second term.
• Miller crafted and led the implementation of Trump’s “Muslim ban,” a xenophobic travel restriction barring entry for passport holders from seven Muslim-majority countries. 
• During Trump’s first administration, Miller led efforts to end DACA, stripping protections from hundreds of thousands of young Americans. He has vowed to dismantle the program entirely, jeopardizing protections for approximately 530,000 Dreamers.
• Under Trump’s first administration, Miller drafted Trump’s executive order blocking the issuance of green cards, along with work and visa programs, and advocated to drastically reduce refugee admissions. As outlined in Project 2025 and echoed by Miller, the Trump team aims to carry out the same actions under his second term. 
• “America First Legal,” an organization founded by Miller to promote the far-right’s extremist and anti-immigrant agenda, was initially listed as an advisory group for Project 2025. Miller later requested its removal from the credits to avoid negative attention.
• Miller has discussed reinstating Title 42 under Trump’s second administration, a program which blocked millions of families from seeking asylum and halted the asylum system.
• Miller maintains close ties with extremist and anti-immigrant groups including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). He frequently cited CIS data to advocate for the Muslim ban and repeatedly served as a keynote speaker at CIS events.
• In 2013, Miller played a key role in derailing the Gang of Eight bill that would have delivered comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform.