President Donald Trump’s decision to promote Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff has left some officials at the Department of Homeland Security stunned, CNN reported Friday.
CNN immigration correspondent Priscilla Alvarez revealed that the move caught even officials familiar with Miller’s aggressive immigration agenda off guard.
“All the same, my sources at the Department of Homeland Security were in disbelief,” Alvarez said.
She described Miller as the “mastermind of immigration policy,” noting that he regularly speaks with Cabinet officials and holds daily meetings to pressure immigration authorities.
“This is someone who is truly the architect of the most granular level,” Alvarez said, adding that Miller was also responsible for pushing ICE officials to reach 3,000 arrests per day.
Alvarez warned that Miller’s promotion signals more of the same, despite voter backlash against Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“Every time this has happened, where the administration has received pushback over its immigration overreach, they always double down,” she said. “And so this suggests that all of this is going to continue.”
But not everyone inside DHS is unhappy.
"There are people at the Department of Homeland Security and within the administration that are happy about this,” Alvarez said.
“They think that Trump is in fighting mode and that they do need to see this mass deportation agenda through,” the CNN correspondent added Friday.
Alvarez said the conflicting reactions exposed deeper divisions within the administration over Trump’s immigration crackdown and its impact on the economy.
“So there's mixed reactions internally, but it also speaks to the divisions that have been true of the entire administration over how do you deal with immigration, which hits so many different sectors,” she concluded.