US President Donald Trump has selected longtime adviser Stephen Miller to be his White House chief of staff.
Friday’s move marks a doubling down on President Trump’s most controversial policy following the disastrous Republican midterm election losses earlier this week.
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Democrats are widely expected to take control of the U.S. House and Senate in January and launch an investigation into Miller’s role in the White House.
Miller, 41, has been one of Trump’s most vocal defenders and is widely considered the architect of the president’s mass deportation campaign.
President Trump called Miller “one of my most trusted advisors” in a post on Truth Social and said he would take over the role from Susie Wiles on Monday.
early believers
Miller built a reputation as a conservative activist long before he joined the Trump administration.
At Santa Monica High School, he directly opposed what he called liberal school policy on a local radio show.
At Duke University, he led the Duke Conservative Union and became an ardent defender of three of the school’s lacrosse players after they were accused of rape.
After graduating from college, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked as a legislative aide to Republican Congressmen and Sen. Jeff Sessions.
He joined Trump’s first presidential campaign in January 2016, where he was credited with shaping the president’s message and acerbic political style.
“I think he and Trump hit it off from the beginning, and I think he helped Trump find his voice,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told The Associated Press in 2017.
What was his role during President Trump’s first term?
Following Trump’s surprise victory in the 2016 election, Miller assumed the role of presidential adviser and speechwriter.
He served as an influential voice in shaping President Trump’s toughest actions on immigration, often framing the issue as an effort to protect Western “civilization.”
During this time, Democratic lawmakers accused Miller of perpetuating white supremacist rhetoric. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center released emails in which Trump’s advisers allegedly supported white supremacist websites and ideologies.
He is credited with authoring the Justice Department’s 2018 “zero tolerance” policy at the U.S. border, which called for the arrest of nearly all adults who enter the country without legal documentation.
The plan led to widespread family separation and prohibited children from being held with their parents in criminal detention centers. President Trump then changed the policy through executive order amid widespread anger.
As an adviser to President Trump, Miller advocated for the repeal of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that allows individuals brought to the United States as undocumented children to receive legal documents related to education and employment. This program is no longer accepting new applicants in 2021.
Miller also pushed for major visa restrictions during President Trump’s first term, including a 2017 travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries (later known as the “Muslim Travel Ban”).
The first order blocked citizens of Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days. A tailored version of this policy was ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
He has since become a top supporter of President Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen and supported plans to certify Trump as the winner.
Trump 2.0
Miller remained by Trump’s side as the former president sought to make a political comeback ahead of the 2024 presidential vote. When the Trump administration returned to power in January 2025, he became deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser.
Since then, he has helped lead President Trump’s mass deportation campaign, which has seen immigration enforcement agents flood into communities across the country and increasingly target individuals with no or only minor criminal records.
In May 2025, Miller told Fox News that the administration has “set a goal of at least 3,000 ICE arrests each day, and President Trump will continue to work to increase that number every day.”
He has also been a vocal defender of increasingly violent tactics by immigration officials. He initially defended the killings of Renee Good and Alex Preti by immigration agents in Minneapolis in January. He initially called both Good and Preti “terrorists” before retracting his comments about Preti.
Since returning to the White House, Miller has increasingly vocally defended Trump’s military actions in the Western Hemisphere while unsuccessfully trying to abolish birthright citizenship.
He supports the US abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and told CNN in January that the US has the right to occupy Greenland based on military force.
“We live in a world where we can talk all we want about international accommodations and all that, but the world we live in, the real world…is ruled by force, ruled by force, ruled by force,” he said.
“This is an iron law of the world that has existed since time immemorial.”
What does a chief of staff do?
It was not immediately clear how Mr. Miller’s new role would affect his influence over Mr. Trump.
The chief of staff is typically tasked with overseeing White House staff and hiring, managing the president’s calendar, and advising the president on policy.
Some insiders refer to this role as the “gatekeeper” to the president, as it primarily controls the flow of information.
