Stephen Miller, one of the principal architects of President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration project, is quietly looking for new ways to target undocumented migrants, according to a report.
Trump’s administration has been forced to scale back its previous approach of sending small armies of federal agents into Democrat-run cities to arrest alleged illegal immigrants, following Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, which saw two protesters shot dead.
Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino was stood down following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti earlier this year and Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem ultimately followed.
But Miller has remained in place and appears not to have lost standing with the president, The New York Times reports.
“Stephen is a trusted and deeply loyal adviser to President Trump and has been critical to the realization of the president’s historic first year in office,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the newspaper.
“Stephen has demonstrated great effectiveness and exceptional capability in every one of the president’s policy initiatives.”
But Miller, who serves as both deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, backed the same broad approach that proved so chaotic in Minnesota.
Like Noem, Miller wrongly accused Pretti of being a “domestic terrorist” in the hours immediately after his death was reported, a claim quickly debunked when eyewitness footage of the clash in which the ICU nurse lost his life was circulated on social media.
It was Miller who visited ICE’s headquarters last May and urged its officers to push the envelope, according to the Times, also setting the highly ambitious target of 3,000 arrests per day, which led to the agency’s sweeping surges into Los Angeles, D.C., Chicago, and Portland before Minneapolis.
It was also Miller who told officers attending a law enforcement conference in Memphis in October that they should crack down on urban crime “without apology and without mercy.” “You are unleashed,” he told them.
When his hard-line approach came under scrutiny following events in Minnesota, the adviser began to cut down his regular conservative media appearances but continued to host regular calls with national security and immigration officials, according to insiders cited by the Times.
He is also still “pushing for new ways to squeeze the lives of undocumented immigrants and those with legal protections, such as making it harder to get public housing or other benefits,” they said.
The officials say that Miller has been busy “putting the finishing touches on a rule to block green cards for immigrants who might need public assistance,” pressuring congressional Republicans to oppose ICE reforms proposed by Democrats, and encouraging deportations as a deterrent.
Other methods discussed by Miller in the interest of making life tougher for illegal immigrants include blocking public education funding for their children – an idea discussed with Texas lawmakers last month – cracking down on alleged fraud among immigrant communities, involving hospitals in reporting on their patients, and seeking credit card information to make it harder for them to spend and save money.
Miller, whose own family originally arrived in the U.S. from Eastern Europe seeking sanctuary from persecution, perhaps most clearly articulated his position on immigration when he told Fox News in December.
“If you bring those societies into our country and then give them unlimited free welfare, what do we think’s going to happen?” he asked. “We need a moratorium on immigration from Third World countries until we can heal ourselves as a nation.”
While many conservatives might share his opinion, not everyone is convinced.
Retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis recently trashed Miller on CNN, telling State of the Union anchor Jake Tapper: “It’s Stephen Miller that’s been repeatedly responsible for embarrassments for the president of the United States, speaking first and asking questions later.”
Tillis accused Miller of having an “outsized influence on the Cabinet” and said: “He’s a big problem in this administration, he has been from the beginning.”
