{"id":170123,"date":"2025-10-31T15:18:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T15:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/how-stephen-miller-is-turning-the-us-state-department-into-an-anti-immigration-machine-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T15:18:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T15:18:05","slug":"how-stephen-miller-is-turning-the-us-state-department-into-an-anti-immigration-machine-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/how-stephen-miller-is-turning-the-us-state-department-into-an-anti-immigration-machine-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"How Stephen Miller is turning the US state department into an \u2018anti-immigration machine\u2019 – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miller is one of the most powerful officials in Trump\u2019s White House, illustrating how it has sought to overcome a \u2018deep state\u2019 of professional diplomats
US politics live \u2013 latest updates<\/a>
The historic shifts in US immigration under Donald Trump<\/a> have been dictated by a relentless voice over a telephone line: Stephen Miller, the president\u2019s immigration<\/a> czar, who in recent months has turned the state department\u2019s visa and refugee operations into what some current and former diplomats have described as a personal fiefdom.
Each morning, usually at 10am, a small circle of conservative diplomats allied with Miller, including those who have assumed control of the state department\u2019s consular and refugee operations, dial in for what some have termed the \u201cStephen Miller call\u201d, an interagency discussion of immigration measures led by Miller, the White House\u2019s homeland security adviser.
In the calls, Miller is said to drill the diplomats on visa and immigration issues \u2013 pressing officials to hasten negotiations with third countries to accept deportees who can not or should not be sent back to their countries of origin, and lobbying for individual visa revocations for critics of Israel\u2019s war in Gaza or of Charlie Kirk, the conservative pundit who was assassinated in September.
Miller\u2019s influence, said one former senior official briefed on the calls, was part of a broader strategy under the Trump administration<\/a> of \u201cinstalling trusted people in the key positions, and turning [the state department] into an anti-immigration machine\u201d.
In the months since Trump was inaugurated, the US 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<\/a> and give priority to white South Africans, <\/strong>and deported tens of thousands of people sometimes to third countries in harsh conditions. At the state department, diplomats said that the administration\u2019s 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.
\u201cIt 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,\u201d said a current senior state department official speaking on background. \u201cFrankly \u2026 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.\u201d
The calls have reached the highest levels of the state department \u2013 a regular attender is deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau, an ally of Miller\u2019s<\/a> and a vocal advocate in the Trump administration\u2019s state department of tighter immigration. He has taken up his role of immigration hawk with relish, recently calling on followers on Twitter to single out targets to revoke visas under the tagline \u201cEl Quitavisas<\/em>\u201d, or \u201cThe Visa Taker\u201d.
Others are members of a new conservative community of diplomats called the Ben Franklin Fellowship, which has condemned the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies of previous state departments, as well as senior officials from the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, which has been restructured to include an \u201coffice of remigration\u201d under the new administration.
Miller\u2019s oversight of a conservative band of diplomats on immigration issues whom he regularly peppers with requests for information and status updates bolsters his reputation as the most powerful official in Trump\u2019s government, with a vast portfolio that also includes the recent strikes on Venezuelan drug boats<\/a>, multiple administration officials have told the Guardian. Critics such as Kamala Harris have called him a white supremacist<\/a>, while the Southern Poverty Law Center called his immigration policies \u201cracist and draconian\u201d.
His influence also illustrates how the White House has sought to overcome a \u201cdeep state\u201d of professional diplomats, elevating allies into key roles and then deploying Miller to oversee them with sometimes obsessive attention to detail.
A White House official said the calls were not unusual and that one former diplomat\u2019s assertion that Miller treated immigration operations as a \u201cpersonal fiefdom\u201d were \u201cjust inaccurate\u201d.
\u201cStephen Miller is a staffer in the Trump administration who is just like any other staffer working to implement the president\u2019s agenda, and any claims that this is Stephen\u2019s policy are inaccurate and demonstrate a lack of understanding about the role of the homeland security adviser,\u201d said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss administration\u2019s staffing roles and internal communications.
\u201cPresident Trump promised to combat the failed open border policies of the previous administration,\u201d said Tommy Pigott, principal spokesperson for the state department. \u201cThe entire administration is working seamlessly together to implement the president\u2019s agenda that he was elected to enact. Thanks to the president\u2019s leadership we now have the most secure border in history, and the administration will continue closely coordinating on key administration priorities. Individuals complaining about White House-agency coordination fundamentally misunderstand our system of government.\u201d
Earlier this year, John Armstrong, the senior bureau official for consular affairs, testified in court that Miller had personally held \u201cat least a dozen\u201d conversations with him to discuss revoking visas for pro-Palestinian academics, often identified by the website Canary Mission, which has suspected ties to Israel.
In the lawsuit<\/a> against the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to deport noncitizens for protesting against the war in Gaza, Armstrong asserted privilege to withhold information<\/a> that \u201cmay concern controversial approaches to the government\u2019s foreign affairs priorities\u201d, saying it could \u201cchill an exchange of information between federal agencies\u201d. In his ruling against the Trump administration, a judge disclosed that attenders included Miller and Andrew Veprek, a veteran diplomat close to Miller who now serves as the deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
The Guardian has learned that similar calls take place most days and that Miller is dictating detailed policy advice to diplomats at a time when the process of receiving a visa to the United States has become demonstrably more arduous around the world; wait times for visa interviews are ballooning, applicants for non-immigrant visas are required to appear for interviews in their home countries, and the administration is scouring foreign applicants\u2019 social media posts for pretexts to deny entry to the United States.
One current state department official briefed on the Miller calls noted that they were held in strict secrecy with no public briefings among a small circle of conservative allies of Miller, who has led the administration\u2019s efforts to elevate immigration as a main priority for law enforcement and US diplomats.
\u201cThis is basically happening every single day, but without those safeguards to understand what\u2019s actually happening,\u201d said the official. \u201cAs questions are asked by the White House, or proclamations are made \u2026 that gets distilled down into a policy guidance or direction to do it now, do it hard \u2026 There\u2019s no room for discussion.\u201d
The person said that the calls were \u201cvery weedy [looking at granular detail]; they\u2019re asking about not just specific policies or visa categories or removal efforts or things like that, but country-by-country specifics\u201d. The calls can last for up to an hour.
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Miller would regularly telephone mid-level diplomats during Trump\u2019s first term to demand status reports on their efforts to deport immigrants, former diplomats said, but the regular attendance of a deputy secretary of state on the call was \u201cvery unusual\u201d.
\u201c[Landau] sits in those meetings \u2026 and then becomes the hammer to ensure that whatever Miller decides gets done,\u201d that person said of the current deputy secretary of state.
Inside the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA), which administrates US visa issuance, the administration has replaced leadership to ensure that its plans are not thwarted by a supposed liberal \u201cdeep state\u201d of career diplomats. Unlike with most other departments during the transition, the White House immediately removed the deputy assistant secretaries and quickly replaced them with ideological allies, in effect replacing control of the department on the morning of 21 January 2025.
Most of the senior members of CA who now manage visa policy are members of the Ben Franklin Fellowship (BFF), a kind of Federalist Society for diplomats that has served as an unofficial recruitment pool under the new administration.
Two of the organization\u2019s three co-founders are former consular officers and immigration hawks, and one of the group\u2019s founding pillars is a call to secure American borders.
In interviews, several co-founders of that group rejected the characterization of the current administration\u2019s policies as \u201canti-immigration\u201d, saying instead that they were a corrective to a dangerous policy of open borders promoted under Joe Biden and previous administrations.
\u201cEach action has an equal and opposite reaction; when you have a wild swing to one direction, you\u2019re going to have a wild swing to try to clean it up,\u201d said Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow in the border security and immigration center at the Heritage Foundation and a co-founder of the group, in an interview. \u201cEven though I\u2019ve seen other changes in incoming administrations that were slower and perhaps more subtle and more in the weeds, you know, [there were] things that experts would notice, like Daca [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], for instance, or temporary protected status.\u201d
Hankinson said it was a \u201cfluke\u201d that BFF members had been appointed to CA, although another co-founder noted that the administration had considered personnel in various agencies before the transition and BFF members were a natural source for recruitment at the state department.
\u201cThere was an attempt to figure out who might be actually not part of the resistance, who actually endorsed or supported administration policy,\u201d said Matt Boyse, a senior fellow with Hudson Institute\u2019s center on Europe and Eurasia and a co-founder of the BFF. \u201cThat was actually, I think, a good attempt by them to ensure that the people who were in senior positions or overseeing policy were in line with the administration.\u201d
\u201cThis is not politicizing the foreign service,\u201d continued Boyse, a former career diplomat, when asked whether it was. \u201cWe fundamentally reject that idea. Just like in any foreign service, there are people of varying political orientations \u2026 That charge is slanderous. It misunderstands the whole mission.\u201d
The quick promotion of ideologically allied diplomats has angered many in the state department who had survived layoffs that cut hundreds of positions. During a recent town hall, according to a person on the call, one angry diplomat asked: \u201cIs it required to be a Ben Franklin fellow to have any sort of leadership position in this department?\u201d
It was one of the most upvoted questions among those listening in.
Angry staffers have said that they believe that the new leadership was promoted due to their ideological beliefs, rather than their professional accomplishments. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s very clear, we all see it, and that\u2019s really disappointing,\u201d said a current consular officer who was critical of the changing policies.<\/p>\n

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Miller is one of the most powerful officials in Trump\u2019s White House, illustrating how it has sought to overcome a \u2018deep state\u2019 of professional diplomatsUS politics live \u2013 latest updatesThe historic shifts in US immigration under Donald Trump have been dictated by a relentless voice over a telephone line: Stephen Miller, the president\u2019s immigration czar, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":170124,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}