WASHINGTON — Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s newly appointed White House chief of staff, has played a central role in shaping many of the administration’s defining domestic policies, particularly its expansive immigration crackdown.
A forceful advocate of Trump’s most ambitious plans to overhaul government since the 2016 presidential campaign, Miller is known for his confrontational rhetoric and unapologetic style. His record is expected to face renewed scrutiny from Democrats as he guides the White House through a difficult lame-duck period after Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress.
Here are some of Miller’s most notable statements over the years:
On immigration: ‘We are being conquered’
As illegal border crossings surged in 2023, Miller characterized migrants as invaders, although many were fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries.
“We are being conquered,” he told Fox News Channel in December 2023 while discussing the increase. “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,” Americans “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.”
He called a Minneapolis man killed by ICE a ‘domestic terrorist’
After federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti during protests against the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies in January, Miller wrote on social media that the 37-year-old Minneapolis resident was a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin” who had “tried to murder federal agents.”
Miller later said in a statement that the federal officers in Minneapolis “may not have been following” protocol.
America ‘created’ Venezuela’s oil industry and Greenland ‘obviously’ should be part of the US
In January, after a U.S. military operation captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Miller published a lengthy post on X criticizing what he called “reverse colonization.” He argued that Western nations were making excessive sacrifices for the developing world and described the practice as “a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world.”
In another post, he defended the U.S. right to take control of 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.”
Miller defended Trump’s claim that the United States was now running Venezuela during an interview with 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,” he said.
In the same interview, Miller argued that the U.S. could use military force to seize Greenland 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 added.
Speeding up deportations by suspending habeas corpus
In May 2025, Miller said the Trump administration was exploring ways to broaden its authority to deport migrants living in the United States illegally. He said officials were “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus, the constitutional protection that allows people to challenge their detention in court.
“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,” he said. “Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”
In the nearly 18 months that followed, Trump and his administration did not publicly pursue the proposal.
Family separation: ‘No one is exempt from immigration law’
During Trump’s first term, Miller promoted a strict deterrence strategy that earlier administrations had been reluctant to use: separating families. Under the policy, federal agents routinely separated children from parents when families were apprehended crossing the border illegally.
Miller defended the approach in a 2018 interview with The New York Times, 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 said.
The policy triggered widespread condemnation, and the Trump administration did not reinstate it during its second term. Miller has nevertheless continued to support mass deportations of people living illegally in the United States, a policy that has separated families based on their legal status.
Arguing about the true meaning of the Statue of Liberty
In 2017, during Trump’s first term, Miller appeared in the White House briefing room to outline plans to reduce the number of green cards issued while giving preference to English speakers and skilled workers.
When asked whether the plan conflicted with the spirit of the poem on the Statue of Liberty, which includes the lines “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” Miller replied, “I don’t want to get off into a whole thing about history here.” He then addressed the poem directly.
“The poem that you’re referring to, that was added later, is not actually a part of the original Statue of Liberty,” Miller said.
Birthright citizenship is ‘suicide’
After the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, which grants citizenship to children born on U.S. soil, Miller said immigrants and their children represented an existential threat to the country.
“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.”
On vaccines: ‘Nobody has studied it’
Miller is among several administration officials who have voiced skepticism about childhood vaccinations. In August, he praised the president for signing an executive order intended to limit the childhood vaccine schedule.
“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 whose youngest child was born in June. “Nobody has studied it. Nobody’s looked at it. Nobody’s thought about it.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said the opposite, noting that research shows receiving multiple vaccines at the same time “does not cause any chronic health problems.”
The Democratic Party ‘does not care’ about US citizens
In August 2025, Miller appeared on Fox News Channel to answer Democratic criticism of Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington and other U.S. cities. He dismissed concerns that the troop presence was intimidating residents and questioned whether it was having a meaningful effect on crime.
He used the appearance to launch a broader attack on the Democratic Party.
“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.”
Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
