White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaks to press outside of the White House on April 14, 2025. A new book confirms that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller controls the Trump administration’s immigration policies. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
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A new book confirms that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller controls the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan provides valuable insight by detailing how Miller directs overall immigration policy, including requiring that immigration authorities report to him. In Trump’s first year, Miller’s impact could be seen in the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the sending of immigrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process, the administration’s attacks on Harvard University and many other actions.
Swan and Haberman begin and end with a provocative thesis about Donald Trump: “[I]f he had served a consecutive second term beginning in January 2021, he would never have accumulated the power he now wielded.” In their interview with Trump, he agrees with them. The four years between Trump’s first and second terms proved especially helpful to Stephen Miller. He used the time to evaluate missteps in the first term and prepare an ambitious agenda to deport millions of immigrants and restrict most forms of legal immigration to the United States.
Stephen Miller did not work for Donald Trump at the start of his first campaign. “Miller had told friends he felt a thrill watching Trump’s 2015 announcement speech in which the new candidate railed about Mexican rapists and murderers,” write Swan and Haberman. In January 2016, Miller took a leave from Sen. Jeff Sessions and joined Donald Trump’s campaign staff. He later played a key policy role in Trump’s first term.
Enacting a “Muslim ban” with the approval of the Supreme Court proved to be Stephen Miller’s most significant policy achievement on legal immigration during Trump’s first term. With few exceptions, the policy banned the entry of immigrants and temporary visa holders from seven mostly Muslim countries. That set a precedent. In Trump’s second term, the administration barred the entry of individuals from 39 countries, preventing many Americans from sponsoring their spouse or child for immigration.
After the Muslim ban, Miller capitalized on Covid-19 by convincing Trump to issue two new proclamations. One blocked nearly all family immigrants from the United States, and the other prevented the entry of employment-based immigrants and temporary visa holders using H-1B, L-1 and other work visas. In a study for the National Foundation for American Policy, University of North Florida economics professor Madeline Zavodny found, “There is no evidence the entry of fewer foreign workers on temporary visas improved outcomes for U.S. workers.” She found no gains for U.S. workers because of drops in H-1B, H-2B and J-1 visas due to the proclamations and Covid-19.
Based on his statements, Stephen Miller appears to believe in what economists call the “lump of labor fallacy,” the view that a fixed number of jobs or amount of work exists in an economy. Economists point out that newcomers, such as immigrants, create additional jobs through entrepreneurship, consumer spending and increased incentives for businesses to invest and expand.
Similar to Trump’s first term, recent reductions in immigration have not helped U.S. workers. “There is no evidence that U.S.-born workers have benefited from the decline in the number of foreign-born workers,” according to an NFAP analysis. “The unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers was 4.7% in February 2026 compared to 4.4% in February 2025.” U.S. workers have not reentered the labor market in response to a decline in the foreign-born workforce. The labor force participation rate for the U.S.-born aged 16 and older dropped from 61.4% in February 2025 to 61.0% in February 2026.
The Trump administration’s policies on illegal and legal immigration may reduce the projected number of workers in the United States by 6.8 million by 2028 and lower the annual rate of economic growth by almost one-third, harming U.S. living standards, according to an NFAP analysis. The policies would lead to a potential labor loss to the U.S. economy of approximately 19 million worker years by 2028, reduce the projected cumulative goods and services produced (GDP) in America by $1.9 trillion, or $5,612 per person, and substantially increase the federal debt.
Ironically, for a president elected to improve the economy, on Trump’s behalf, Miller is implementing a policy designed to lower the labor supply in the United States, a prescription for reducing U.S. economic growth and raising the federal debt, given the crucial role immigrants play in U.S. labor force growth. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in February a drop of 596,000 foreign-born workers since January 2026, and a decline of 1,008,000 since a peak in March 2025.
One way the Trump administration has reduced immigration is by ending nearly all refugee admissions, something Miller failed to accomplish at the start of Trump’s first term. In his second bite at the apple, Miller turned U.S. refugee policy into one that admits only a small number of white people from South Africa. Refugee experts consider the policy so extreme that if critics had accused Trump of planning to admit only white people as refugees during the 2024 presidential election campaign, it is likely few Americans would have believed it.
Swan and Haberman imply that Stephen Miller has avoided having his communications with other administration officials subjected to discovery in lawsuits or under laws on executive branch recordkeeping by not putting his directives in writing. “Miller was a master of concealment,” they write. “He avoided putting his requests in writing, favoring phone calls and quiet talks.”
Fostering the perception that he speaks for Trump strengthens his position. Swan and Haberman quote a White House official on how Miller would enter meetings and say, “Well, I’ve spoken to the President” or “I’ve heard the President say this about this issue.” They write, “Some may have rolled their eyes, but few would challenge Miller directly.”
Miller used a photo showing an administration staffer beaten during an attempted carjacking in Washington, D.C. to prompt Trump into signing an order authorizing National Guard troops in the city. After an Afghan national shot two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., killing one, Miller used the incident to justify banning immigrants from 39 countries.
The book describes how Stephen Miller worked with Tom Homan, a former ICE official appointed Border Czar in the second Trump administration, to carry out mass deportation. When campaigning in 2024, Trump highlighted the need to deport criminals. However, Miller wanted to deport everyone in the country without legal status and also to strip legal protections from people like Haitians and Venezuelans with Temporary Protected Status and remove them as well.
For communications purposes, DHS adopted the slogan “worst of the worst,” but Miller did not like that emphasis, according to the authors, because he did not want to deport only hardened criminals. ICE soon filled its detention space mostly with people who had immigration violations but no criminal convictions.
“When Homan and Stephen Miller joined forces again, in 2025, mass deportation became a whole-of-government effort,” write Swan and Haberman. “Miller drove the policy; Homan made it happen.” According to the authors, during a call in late February, he threatened to fire all of the senior leadership of ICE and DHS because they weren’t deporting people fast enough. “Miller’s eruptions became legendary across the government,” they write. “Those on the receiving end of his barrages described them as often unhinged and needlessly abusive.”
Miller set arrest quotas with a goal of deporting at least one million people a year. States such as Virginia have outlawed arrest quotas because they can lead to injustice and perverse incentives. Swan and Haberman indicate that it was not Miller’s concern. His demand for higher numbers encouraged sweeps and high-profile raids. Critics say Miller’s statement that ICE and Border Patrol agents had “immunity” encouraged lawlessness and a lack of respect for civil liberties.
“In one raid . . . (Border Patrol) agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter into a residential building the Tren de Aragua members had supposedly taken over,” write Swan and Haberman. “They went door-to-door, zip-tying residents as they moved through, including U.S. citizens and children.” The authors note that “Questions about the mounting use of excessive force were routinely waved off by [the Border Patrol’s Greg] Bovino, ICE and Homeland Security officials alike.” Videos online appeared to show a significant amount of racial or ethnic profiling.
Stephen Miller and Vice President JD Vance do not come out well in the book in their depictions following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. An ICE agent shot Good in the face as she drove away from ICE activity, and a Border Patrol agent killed Alex Pretti, who had just helped a woman roughed up by law enforcement. Neither agent will likely ever face federal prosecution. “Miller would immediately accuse Renee Good of ‘domestic terrorism’ and call Pretti ‘an assassin’ shortly after he was killed,” write Swan and Haberman.
After the deaths of Good and Pretti, JD Vance appears unconcerned about civil liberties or the deaths of Americans. “In his view they needed to swiftly invoke the Insurrection Act to crush the unrest. . . . The message it would send—that paid agitators could not get away with disrupting the ICE work—would ensure that people wouldn’t try again. There was no evidence so far that either Pretti or Good were paid activists.”
In a scoop that also appeared in the New York Times, Swan and Haberman report that Stephen Miller wanted the president to suspend habeas corpus to deny immigrants the right to due process or protections against deportation. White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf prevented the move after explaining in legal memos that the Supreme Court had held that even non-citizens are entitled to challenge their detention before a judge.
“As the first year wore on, pollsters consistently found that Trump’s harsh deportation program was turning off many of the swing voters who had delivered him the 2024 election,” according to the authors. The book details a much-publicized episode in the administration’s deportation program—the legal and foreign policy machinations that resulted in sending immigrants to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison without due process.
Swan and Haberman show how Stephen Miller has used Trump to achieve his anti-immigration agenda. While the book devotes less time to the Trump administration’s policies on legal immigration, Trump has expressed positive views H-1B visas and international students that bear no relation to the restrictive policies implemented by Stephen Miller and his allies in the president’s name.
In the end, Swan and Haberman make clear that Miller is powerful because Donald Trump is president, and Trump is well aware of Stephen Miller’s immigration views. According to Swan and Haberman, “In a 2024 campaign meeting, Trump remarked that if it were left to Miller, there would be only 100 million people in the United States and they would all look like Stephen Miller.”
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