WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's new White House chief of staff, Stephen Miller, is behind many of the administration's signature domestic policy initiatives — especially its sweeping crackdown on immigration.
An outspoken defender of Trump's most far-reaching goals to remake government going back to his 2016 run for president, Miller is known for his harsh language and unapologetic bombast, attracting outsized attention from supporters and critics alike. His record is likely to be scrutinized by Democrats in his powerful new role as he leads Trump's White House through a difficult lame duck period after the Republican Party lost both houses of Congress.
Here are some memorable things Miller has said through the years:
During a 2023 spike in illegal border crossings, Miller described migrants as invaders, even though many were escaping poverty and violence in their home countries.
“We are being conquered,” he told Fox News Channel in December 2023, commenting on the sharp rise. “We have millions of people coming in from different cultures and different ways of living and different belief systems.”
Miller also warned that “a generation from now,” people “will not know the country that they are living in. These consequences are permanent. Unless there’s massive large-scale deportations by the millions, it will be irrevocable.”
After federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti during protests against the Trump administration's hardline immigration policies in January, Miller posted on social media that the 37-year-old Minneapolis resident was a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin” who had “tried to murder federal agents.”
Later, Miller said in a statement that the federal officers in Minneapolis “may not have been following” protocol.
In January, after a daring U.S. military operation captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Miller used a lengthy post on X to decry “reverse colonization” in which he suggested that Western nations were sacrificing too much for the developing world and that such a practice “has been a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world.”
In another post, he defended the right of the U.S. to take over Venezuela's vast oil reserves, writing: “American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.”
He defended Trump's assertion that the U.S. was now running Venezuela, by telling CNN's Jake Tapper: “You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”
In the same interview, Miller also argued that the U.S. could seize Greenland by military force from NATO ally Denmark. “Obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States,” he said.
“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland," Miller said.
In May of 2025, Miller suggested that the Trump administration was looking for ways to expand its power to deport migrants who are in the United States illegally. To achieve that, he said officials were “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus — the constitutional right for people to legally challenge their detention by the government.
“The Constitution is clear — and that of course is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller said.
“So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at,” Miller said. “Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”
In the nearly 18 months since, the idea has not been publicly pursued by Trump and his administration.
During Trump’s first term, Miller championed a strict immigration deterrence policy that previous administrations had been hesitant to adopt: family separation. It called for routinely having federal agents separate children from their parents if families were apprehended illegally crossing the border.
Miller defended the policy to The New York Times in 2018, saying it “was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period.”
“The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law,” he added.
The tactic sparked widespread outcry, and the Trump administration did not revive it in its second term. Still, Miller has helped promote mass deportations of people already living illegally in the U.S. that has divided families according to legal status.
During Trump's first term in 2017, Miller appeared in the White House briefing room to detail for reporters plans to cut back on the number of green cards issued, while prioritizing English speakers and skilled workers.
Asked if doing so might violate the spirit of the poem on the Statue of Liberty, that reads in part, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," Miller responded, “I don’t want to get off into a whole thing about history here.” He then did just that.
“The poem that you’re referring to, that was added later, is not actually a part of the original Statue of Liberty,” Miller said.
When the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Trump’s attempt to throw out birthright citizenship — which grants citizenship to any child born on U.S. soil — Miller said immigrants and their children pose an existential threat to the nation.
"This is absolutely a deep knife wound in the heart of the American republic,” he told Fox News Channel in June. “If your ruling requires you to suicide your civilization, your reading of the Constitution is wrong.”
Miller is one of many members of the administration who has expressed skepticism about childhood vaccines. In August, he praised the president for signing an executive order aimed at curtailing the vaccine schedule for children.
“Millions and millions of parents feel they’ve been pressured when their children are just weeks out of the hospital to take five shots, six shots, seven shots all at once,” said Miller, a father of four, including an infant born in June. “Nobody has studied it. Nobody’s looked at it. Nobody’s thought about it.”
His comments contradict what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said, which is that research shows getting several vaccines simultaneously “does not cause any chronic health problems.”
In August 2025, Miller appeared on Fox News Channel to respond to criticism from Democrats over Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington and other U.S. cities — brushing aside concerns that the presence of troops was frightening residents, while having only a questionable impact on crime.
Miller used the occasion to take aim at Democrats more broadly.
“The Democrat Party does not fight for, care about or represent American citizens,” he said. “It is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gang bangers and illegal alien killers and terrorists.”
Miller added: “The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”
White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller and his wife Katie wait for President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump to greet families and hand out candy during a Halloween event on the South Lawn of the White House, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Incoming White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, White House aide Natalie Harp and Secretary of State Marco Rubio walk to board Marine One with President Donald Trump on the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, Nov. 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)
