Stephen Miller's aggressive immigration policy has led to disastrous outcomes and criticism, forcing him to change course, an analyst explained on Tuesday.
The White House deputy chief of staff has had to develop a new strategy for the Trump administration's immigration policy, according to a new New York Times report and video featuring White House correspondent Zolan Kanno-Youngs.
Miller's different approach involves zeroing in on social services fraud and placing less emphasis on deportation raids. He recently joined Vice President JD Vance at a White House event on the anti-fraud task force centered on the administration's crackdown on immigrants who were abusing benefits and allegedly committing fraud, Kanno-Youngs reported.
"The people at this table are all united in absolute determination to stop this plague of fraud, criminality and abuse," Miller said at the event.
This move has been on Miller's mind all along, Kanno-Youngs explained.
"Miller has long tried to establish a link between immigrants and fraud, but there was a legitimate case of fraud in Minnesota that presented an ideal opportunity to ramp up these attacks," Kanno-Youngs said.
"However, the anti-fraud task force is also just one piece of a much broader effort that Stephen Miller is pursuing to make the lives of immigrants without legal status so uncomfortable that they end up leaving the country voluntarily," Kanno-Youngs explained. "This shift is largely the result of the political backlash that the administration faced after the deportation raids in Minneapolis. Stephen Miller is now focused on advancing policies that can target how immigrants access public housing."
Miller has also started questioning how immigrants use credit cards and has started working with different state officials, including Tennessee, to try and limit how immigrants access hospitals and social service agencies. In Texas, he's been asking how children of immigrants access public schools.
"These less visible policies are incredibly impactful," Kanno-Youngs added.