President Donald Trump's influential deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has exerted control over the U.S. Department of State to fundamentally transform its mission of diplomacy, according to a report.
The right-wing White House official has directed the administration's immigration crackdown across multiple agencies, but Miller's takeover of the State Department has alarmed former officials, reported The Guardian.
"Each morning, usually at 10 a.m., a small circle of conservative diplomats allied with Miller, including those who have assumed control of the state department’s consular and refugee operations, dial in for what some have termed the 'Stephen Miller call,' an interagency discussion of immigration measures led by Miller, the White House’s homeland security adviser," the publication reported.
Miller grills diplomats on visa and immigration issues and pressures officials to negotiate with third countries to accept deportees who cannot be sent back to their countries of origin. He has personally pushed to revoke the visas for individuals who've criticized Israel's war in Gaza or slain conservative pundit Charlie Kirk.
"Miller’s influence, said one former senior official briefed on the calls, was part of a broader strategy under the Trump administration of 'installing trusted people in the key positions, and turning [the state department] into an anti-immigration machine,'" The Guardian reported.
His wife Katie Miller recently suggested that a fellow panelist on "Piers Morgan Uncensored" should be deported after he seemingly got the best of her during a debate, and Miller himself is singularly focused on revoking the visas of migrants and refugees – especially non-whites – using every lever of government power at his disposal, the report stated.
"In the months since Trump was inaugurated, the U.S. has revoked thousands of visas, many for students, established full or partial bans on immigrants from 19 countries, announced it would take only 7,500 refugees next year and give priority to white South Africans and deported tens of thousands of people sometimes to third countries in harsh conditions," The Guardian reported. "At the state department, diplomats said that the administration’s focus on immigration was a significant pivot, especially for those who had previously worked in departments seeking to facilitate legal migration rather than deter it."
That represents a major shift in the department's priorities.
“It is certainly true in the Trump administration that migration issues have become a key pillar of our foreign policy, and this may be here to stay for the rest of the century,” said a current senior State Department official. “Frankly … this is something that is somewhat new for the State Department. I would say migration issues have not typically been considered to be a key focus of the United States diplomatic role in the world.”
A senior State Department testified earlier this year in a lawsuit challenging deportations of Gaza protesters that Miller had spoken to him "at least a dozen" times to discuss the matter, and The Guardian reported that similar calls take places most days and that he personally dictated anti-immigration policy advice.
“This is basically happening every single day, but without those safeguards to understand what’s actually happening,” said a current State Department official. “As questions are asked by the White House, or proclamations are made … that gets distilled down into a policy guidance or direction to do it now, do it hard … There’s no room for discussion.”
"[The calls are] very weedy [looking at granular detail]; they’re asking about not just specific policies or visa categories or removal efforts or things like that, but country-by-country specifics,” the person said.
Miller regularly called mid-level diplomats during Trump’s first term demanding updates on their deportation efforts, a former diplomat said, but now his ally Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, takes part in the calls and regularly singles out individual targets for visa revocation on his X account – using the tagline “El Quitavisas," or “The Visa Taker."
“[Landau] sits in those meetings … and then becomes the hammer to ensure that whatever Miller decides to gets done,” that person said.
