Stephen Miller in Retreat – The Atlantic
Just hours earlier than Stephen Miller arrived on the Mar-a-Lago ballroom on New Year’s Eve—the place he would welcome 2026 by dancing subsequent to the quickly-to-be-defenestrated homeland safety secretary, Kristi Noem, because the Nineties cultural relic Vanilla Ice carried out—he received a fantastic, although in the end fleeting, victory. The Labor Department’s Foreign Labor Certification workplace announced that the Trump administration would lower the variety of authorized visas for seasonal employees by about 50 %. Miller had been making an attempt since his days as a Senate aide to cut back reliance on visas granted yearly to the hospitality, development, and landscaping industries.
But the plan unraveled inside weeks. After the killing of two protesters in Minneapolis, President Trump reversed the visa cuts as a part of a late-January retreat from Miller’s arduous-edged targets. Miller was not concerned in the stroll again, based on two folks with data of the method and who requested anonymity to debate inside deliberations. Instead, Trump made the choice with the “border czar,” Tom Homan, and others after listening to about considerations from hospitality-trade employers, they mentioned.
The reversal was one of many earliest indicators that Miller’s affect is on the wane. Others have adopted. The White House deputy chief of employees and homeland safety adviser designed Trump’s second-time period immigration agenda. But weeks into the brand new yr, the president dismantled the roving Border Patrol strike forces that Miller had inspired; turned on Noem, who had carried out Miller’s aggressive directions; and handed management of the deportation program again to profession regulation-enforcement officers.
White House insiders mentioned that Miller stays a high adviser to the president, that he has a singular relationship to Trump constructed over the previous decade, and that his job shouldn’t be in jeopardy. Immigration enforcement stays a central theme of the administration and is predicted to function prominently in Trump’s midterm-election messaging. They mentioned that Miller has all the time seen himself as a staffer who subordinates his personal opinions on coverage to the agenda of the president, even when it shifts. “The President loves Stephen,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung advised us in an announcement. “And the White House staff respects him tremendously.”
But Trump, who has beforehand joked that Miller’s “truest feelings” are so excessive that they shouldn’t be aired publicly, has additionally advised others in latest weeks that he understands Miller generally goes too far, advisers advised us. They mentioned that Trump acknowledged instantly after the second killing in Minneapolis, of the protester Alex Pretti, that the coverage wanted to shift, and he didn’t embrace Miller’s public description of Pretti as a “domestic terrorist.” The query now could be how lengthy Trump will maintain Miller and his coverage prescriptions at a distance.
“I think the president knows very, very well what he can go to Stephen for, and what he probably shouldn’t tell him if he doesn’t want to get an earful,” one former administration official advised us. Another adviser described Trump’s view of Miller extra bluntly: “The president knows who he is, period.”
The setback for Miller is putting largely as a result of his rise was so beautiful. No White House official in latest historical past—since Vice President Dick Cheney in the early 2000s, maybe—has had such a dramatic and direct impression on U.S. authorities coverage and such operational sway over so many elements of presidency.
Miller oversaw the drafting and launch of govt orders in the early days of Trump’s second time period, sat on the desk for early nationwide-safety selections, and was the driving power behind laws that awarded $175 billion in funding for immigration enforcement, permitting for extra Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, detention facilities, and deportation flights. It was Miller who set a purpose of three,000 ICE arrests a day to hit his goal of 1 million deportations a yr, matching the legislative targets that he helped draft. He instructed ICE officers to comb by Home Depot parking heaps to assist meet that purpose. When avenue clashes over enforcement began, he publicly declared that officers had “federal immunity” for his or her actions on the job, and he helped draft a nationwide-safety memorandum that advised regulation enforcement to deal with even peaceable anti-deportation protests and the discharge of non-public particulars about authorities officers as telltale indicators of potential “domestic terrorism” conspiracies.
But the second yr of Trump’s second time period is being directed by a brand new immigration-enforcement group. The new secretary of homeland safety, former Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, took over in late March with a mandate to get again to fundamentals. Leaders of the division who had been sidelined by Noem, comparable to Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, instantly discovered themselves empowered. Employees she had pushed out, comparable to former Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar and the CBP official Matt Eagan, had been welcomed again. Andrew Block, an in depth ally of Miller who served as CBP’s chief counsel, was proven the door, based on two folks briefed on the change. (Block didn’t reply to a request for remark.)
Underlying the entire adjustments was a return to traditional ICE “targeted enforcement” ways that prioritize immigrants with felony information or pending deportation orders, and that search to make arrests with much less drama. The change in coverage has proven up in the numbers. In March, ICE made about 30,000 arrests, down from 36,000 in January, the data show—effectively under Miller’s purpose of three,000 detentions a day. The drop is much more exceptional as a result of it follows a hiring surge final fall—pushed by Miller—so as to add 12,000 ICE officers and brokers. ICE additionally has fewer immigrants in its jails now, the newest statistics present. The variety of detainees has dropped from about 70,000 in late January to roughly 60,000 late final month, based on the newest inside knowledge.
The technique, blessed by Trump, is a reduction for Republican marketing campaign strategists who watched with trepidation because the street battles in Minneapolis turned immigration, a difficulty that Trump had dominated in 2024, right into a legal responsibility. Of all the usual coverage-approval questions requested about presidents, immigration was the one which Trump got here into workplace for his second time period with the very best scores on—a internet optimistic of seven share factors, based on the polling common saved by Silver Bulletin, Nate Silver’s Substack. That fell to a destructive-14-level ranking in February 2026, earlier than recovering to destructive-10 factors since then. Miller’s allies, for his or her half, blame the Department of Homeland Security for feeding the White House incorrect data after Pretti’s demise that instructed that he was the aggressor.
Mullin, who has no prior federal-regulation-enforcement expertise, is being mentored by Homan, a former appearing director of ICE, who began working for the federal authorities in 1984. Homan gave a keynote speech at a border-safety convention in Phoenix this week that was attended by high DHS officers, telling the viewers that the mass-deportation plan stays on observe. “You ain’t seen shit yet,” Homan mentioned, drawing cheers. His message was largely aimed toward critics on the suitable who say the administration is backing off.
Homan, who saved an arms-length relationship with Noem, has mentioned that he speaks with Mullin “every day, several times a day.” Miller additionally speaks with Mullin usually, a White House official advised us. In an announcement for this story, Mullin advised us that he works intently with each Homan and Miller. “Everyone’s on the same page,” Mullin mentioned.
But in distinction with the legislative negotiations over DHS funding final yr, Homan and Mullin, not Miller, had been those concerned in talks on Capitol Hill to revive DHS funding this yr, based on two DHS officers. Miller continues to conduct day by day 10 a.m. convention calls with senior officers on the division and with different companies concerned in immigration enforcement, however the common tone has been much less demanding in latest weeks, two folks with data of the calls advised us. And the facility middle has shifted. “The new secretary is listening to Tom Homan and Rodney Scott before he is ever listening to Stephen Miller,” a senior administration official advised us. “We just have law enforcement in charge.”
Miller allies say that a lot of his direct involvement final yr with the Department of Homeland Security was wanted to assist Noem, who usually feuded with heads of different companies, requiring Miller to play a extra fingers-on function. “The entire White House has to worry less about cleaning up after DHS with new leadership in there,” the White House official advised us.
Tright here have been no accounts of clashes or stress between Homan and Miller, and the previous has even praised the latter as “one of the most brilliant people I’ve met in my entire life.” But from the beginning of the administration, they’ve advocated for various approaches to Trump’s mass-deportation marketing campaign. Miller has emphasised sheer numbers, and Homan prefers a top quality-over-amount strategy that prioritizes immigrants with felony information. “I have always worked, and continue to work closely, with Stephen and now Secretary Mullin to deliver on the President’s commitment to the American people,” Homan advised us in an announcement.
But Homan’s strategy is the predominant one proper now, and the division has been quietly reversing adjustments that Miller ordered. Miller had pushed aggressively to quick-observe coaching for brand new ICE hires, slashing the academy course to about eight weeks. The accelerated schedule alarmed veteran ICE officers, and the hiring surge was marred by excessive dropout charges. In latest weeks, ICE reverted to a 4-and-a-half-month coaching program much like its former academy course, based on three officers who weren’t approved to debate the change.
Miller has moved his focus to a brand new activity power aimed toward uncovering “fraud” amongst immigrant communities. He nonetheless posts usually on social media about violent crime by undocumented migrants. He has stopped publicly railing towards the home-terrorism menace of liberal activists, though a brand new counterterrorism technique launched this week nonetheless lists “Violent Left-Wing Extremists” (however not violent proper-wing extremists) as a menace on par with narco- and Islamic terrorists. He has additionally begun to push for extra radical congressional redistricting, arguing that Republicans may choose up 40 seats or extra in the event that they benefit from the latest Supreme Court Voting Rights Act ruling, overhaul the Census, and persuade courts to exclude undocumented immigrants from inhabitants counts that decide what number of seats are given to every state.
Several folks we spoke with mentioned that it’s only a matter of time earlier than Miller is ready to reassert himself with new initiatives contained in the administration. One former division official cautioned us towards counting out Miller or predicting a protracted-time period lack of affect on immigration coverage. “In the end, Stephen is the one who comes up with new ideas,” the previous official mentioned. “As much as everyone loves Tom Homan, he’s not going to say ‘Here’s a unique authority we could use to do X, Y and Z.’ But the president likes Homan’s approach at the moment.”
This shouldn’t be the primary time Miller’s arduous-line strategy has damage Trump politically. In the spring of 2018, Miller championed the coverage of separating migrant parents from their children on the border, saying on the time that he seen it as an efficient means of deterring migrants from making an attempt the journey in the primary place. That backlash was bipartisan and intense, forcing Trump to reverse course inside weeks. The episode turned one of the vital evident missteps of Trump’s first time period, and it galvanized Democrats, fueling the celebration’s midterm victories. Miller took the setback in stride, retreating to craft new restrictions on migration that used legal guidelines designed to guard the nation from illness to chop refugee admissions and block asylum seekers after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
But there are clear indicators that Miller has not backed away from his personal views on immigration—together with on H-2B visas. As an aide to Senator Jeff Sessions in 2015, Miller helped oppose an effort by then–Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a Republican, to lift the cap on the visas. (Sessions argued that short-term employees threatened “jobs and livelihoods of thousands of loyal Americans.”) In 2017, Miller emailed then–Labor Secretary Alex Acosta an article about rising wages in a Maine resort city after a scarcity of H-2B visas. “Markets work,” was the topic line, based on a doc obtained by a public-information request by American Oversight.
The day after the information broke this yr that Trump had reversed his cuts to the H-2B visa program, Miller took to social media to broadly condemn any effort to experiment with “importing a foreign labor class.” “All visas,” he wrote, “are a bridge to citizenship.” It was as shut because the staffer would get to criticizing his boss.
*Sources: Aaron Schwartz / CNP / Bloomberg / Getty; Anna Moneymaker / Getty; Kevin Dietsch / Getty; Getty; Richard Tsong-Taatarii / The Minnesota Star Tribune / Getty.
