Stephen Miller’s Grip on Trump Is Starting to Weaken
Source: The New Republic · Bias: Left
Summary
The architect of Donald Trump’s second-term immigration agenda is losing his influence.White House deputy chief of staff and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller has aimed to rewrite U.S. immigration policy since his early days in Washington as a Senate aide. But even atop his perch within the Trump administration, Miller’s schemes have experienced myriad setbacks.Thus far, the president has dismantled the Border Patrol strike forces that Miller had campaigned for, turned on ex-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for effectively following Miller’s orders, and handed the reins of America’s deportation program back to law enforcement officials, reported The Atlantic Monday.The White House insists that Miller’s place within Trump’s entourage has not changed, and that he remains a steadfast and widely respected adviser to the president.“The President loves Stephen,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told The Atlantic in a statement. “And the White House staff respects him tremendously.”But behind the scenes, Trump’s language about the immigration aide is changing. The president has privately joked that Miller’s “truest feelings” are too extreme for the public, and reportedly thinks that sometimes Miller takes things too far, according to presidential advisers that spoke with the magazine.Trump reportedly disagreed with Miller’s description of Alex Pretti—one of two U.S. citizens shot and killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis this winter—as a “domestic terrorist,” and acknowledged afterwards that U.S. policy needed to shift as a result. Miller has framed immigration as an “invasion.” He has advocated to end habeas corpus for immigrants, promoted large-scale raids at workplaces, churches, and neighborhoods, threatened the futures of immigrants who do not “self-deport,” and encouraged the White House to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deploy troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. He has leveraged his position within the administration to advance American warmongering abroad, pushing the White House to bomb boats in the Caribbean when a plan to invade Mexico fell through.What is not clear is how long Trump will keep Miller, and his violent ideologies, around. Miller’s influence on his pet project, immigration, is already waning.“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 told The Atlantic. Another adviser was more blunt: “The president knows who he is, period.”Since Noem was ousted, the power structure has shifted, with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and border czar Tom Homan taking the lead on U.S. immigration policy in Miller’s place.“The new secretary is listening to Tom Homan and [Border Protection Commissioner] Rodney Scott before he is ever listening to Stephen Miller,” a senior administration official told The Atlantic. “We just have law enforcement in charge.”Without Noem to muck up the agenda, Miller’s direct involvement with the agency no longer seems necessary.“The entire White House has to worry less about cleaning up after DHS with new leadership in there,” one White House official said.
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