Kathrine Frich
Since the start of the president’s second term, Miller has led huge federal enforcement sweeps across the country.
Sweep-everything policies always look simple on paper. In Washington, aides love drawing up bold rules with big numbers attached.
Yet the mood inside a building changes fast when a broad government dragnet suddenly hits someone close to home.
Trouble at home
President Donald Trump is souring on White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s sweeping deportation drive after it touched First Lady Melania Trump’s personal circle, according to the Irish Star. Since the start of the president’s second term, Miller has led huge federal enforcement sweeps across the country.
His newest push sets daily arrest targets of around 3,000 noncitizens, seeks to deport every undocumented person in America, and calls for ICE detention centers to be as “inhumane as possible.” According to the Irish Star, that dragnet recently swept up some of the first lady’s close friends.
Born in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, the 56-year-old first lady is a legal US citizen who still keeps many immigrant friends. After she complained to her husband about the deportations, an insider told The Wall Street Journal that the president informed his aides Miller’s agenda had gone “too far.”
Red states push back
Anger over the raids stretches well beyond the East Wing. According to the Irish Star, Republicans in conservative states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas are warning that the arrests could gut their farming sectors.
Data from the Center for Migration Studies shows that 86% of US farmworkers were born abroad and 45% lack legal status, sparking fears that losing field hands will drive up beef and grocery prices.
Lawmakers also spoke out after the fatal shooting of young Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Following the nurse’s death, GOP Senators Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski joined Representatives Andrew Garbarino and Michael McCaul, plus Governors Kevin Stitt and Jim Scott, to demand a joint federal-state probe into the use of force and the credibility of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.
Meanwhile, Republican Senator Thom Tillis has repeatedly called for Miller’s firing. Asked on CNN’s State of the Union whether the aide should go, Tillis replied, “Oh, of course I do.”
He called Miller “a big problem in this administration” who exercises “outsized influence over the operations of the cabinet.”
“It gives me pause that you had people like Stephen Miller calling the shots,” Tillis added on CNN, noting the aide pushed the US to go after Greenland and caused “embarrassments for the President of the United States by acting too quickly speaking, first, and thinking later.”
