Stephen Miller
Based on Wikipedia: Stephen Miller
The Contrarian Who Shaped a Presidency
Before Stephen Miller became one of the most influential figures in American immigration policy, he was a teenage talk-radio caller in Santa Monica, California—a kid so eager to argue that he dialed into conservative shows sixty-nine times before graduating high school.
That fact alone tells you something essential about the man who would go on to architect some of the most controversial policies of the Trump era: the Muslim travel ban, family separations at the border, and a wholesale reimagining of who belongs in America.
Born in 1985 into an affluent Jewish family in Santa Monica's exclusive North of Montana neighborhood, Miller's story contains a peculiar irony that his critics never tire of pointing out. His great-grandparents fled the Pale of Settlement—that territory in Imperial Russia where Jews were forced to live—escaping pogroms and, ultimately, the Holocaust. They came to America as refugees, the very category of person Miller would later work to restrict.
A Contrarian Takes Shape
Miller's classmates at Beth Shir Shalom, the Reform synagogue where he attended Hebrew school, remember him as a contrarian. This was not meant as a compliment.
The trait crystallized at Santa Monica High School, where Miller found his first cause: opposing the school's chapter of the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán, a Mexican-American student organization. According to the chapter's founder, Miller taunted immigrants and insisted that other students and teachers speak English. Whether this was principled advocacy for English as a unifying language or something uglier depends entirely on whom you ask.
What's beyond dispute is Miller's precocious talent for self-promotion. He called into The Larry Elder Show, a conservative talk-radio program, so frequently that he convinced the host to visit his high school. After the September 11th attacks, Miller appeared on the show to describe an incident involving a Canadian teacher and an American flag. Miller claimed the teacher had dragged the flag across the floor and trampled it. Other students remembered the incident differently—the teacher had placed the flag on the floor to discuss its importance, they said, without any trampling involved.
This pattern—Miller telling a story one way, others remembering it differently—would recur throughout his career.
The Speech That Lost an Election
In 2002, Miller ran for student announcer at Santa Monica High. The position was essentially ceremonial, the kind of thing most students campaign for with jokes and promises of better music in the cafeteria.
Miller took a different approach.
During his campaign speech, he questioned why students were asked to pick up their own trash when the school employed custodians to do it for them. The student body, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not respond well to a candidate suggesting they were above cleaning up after themselves. Miller lost.
But he had discovered something important: controversy generates attention. Being lampooned in the school newspaper's April Fools' Day edition wasn't a defeat—it was proof he mattered. By his 2003 graduation, journalist Jean Guerrero would later observe, Miller had "received more publicity than probably any other student in class."
The Horowitz Connection
David Horowitz heard Miller on The Larry Elder Show and recognized something in the teenager. Horowitz was a former leftist radical who had swung hard to the right, becoming a prominent conservative writer and activist. He would become one of the most important figures in Miller's early career.
The relationship worked both ways. Horowitz invited Miller to speak at events; Miller invited Horowitz to speak at his high school. Miller wrote for FrontPage Magazine, Horowitz's website, demanding that Santa Monica High embrace what he called "inclusive patriotism"—his term for the opposite of multiculturalism—and institute the Pledge of Allegiance five days a week.
The school did adopt the pledge. Miller called it a "huge victory."
For a high school senior to claim credit for changing school policy—and to have a platform to announce that victory—was remarkable. Most teenagers are trying to figure out prom dates. Miller was building a political brand.
Duke and the Lacrosse Case
Miller arrived at Duke University in 2003 to study political science, and immediately set about making himself impossible to ignore. When Duke scheduled a Palestine Solidarity Movement conference, Miller founded the university's chapter of Horowitz's Students for Academic Freedom specifically to oppose it.
He began writing a column for the Duke Chronicle, the student newspaper. He called it "Miller Time."
The subtitle was presumably not intended to evoke the beer commercial, but it captured something true about Miller's approach: every moment was an opportunity for confrontation. His columns critiqued multiculturalism with such combative zeal that he earned a reputation as pugnacious even among fellow conservatives.
Then came the lacrosse case.
In 2006, a woman named Crystal Mangum accused three members of Duke's lacrosse team of rape. The case became a national flashpoint, raising questions about race, class, privilege, and the rush to judgment. Miller defended the accused players, arguing they had been presumed guilty simply for being white males.
He appeared on Nancy Grace's television show to advocate for them. When DNA evidence emerged that undermined the accuser's claims, Miller kept pressing, eventually appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show to condemn a faculty advertisement that had referenced "students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism."
The charges were eventually dropped. The prosecutor was disbarred for misconduct. Miller later told The Atlantic that defending the lacrosse players was his greatest college achievement.
An Unlikely Friendship
By his senior year, Miller had become executive director of the Duke Conservative Union, a position that allowed him to fundraise and organize events. Through the union, he met Richard Spencer.
Spencer would later become notorious as a white supremacist, the man who coined the term "alt-right" and led crowds in Nazi salutes after Donald Trump's election. In 2007, though, he was simply another conservative activist. He and Miller organized an immigration debate together that March.
Miller has never publicly addressed the nature of their relationship, and there's no evidence he shared Spencer's explicitly white nationalist views. But the connection would later raise uncomfortable questions about Miller's ideological circle.
Despite telling Nancy Grace he wanted to be a prosecutor and David Horowitz that he aspired to the Senate, Miller skipped his scheduled LSAT—the entrance exam required for law school applications. He later said he was focused on establishing a memorial for the September 11th attacks. Whatever the reason, the legal path closed. The political path remained open.
Washington Beckons
After graduating from Duke, Miller traveled through Eurasia and took a Birthright Israel trip—the free ten-day heritage tour offered to young Jews. Then Horowitz connected him with his first job in Washington: press secretary for Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann.
Miller was twenty-two years old. His family helped him purchase a $450,000 condominium in Washington, D.C. He was playing in the big leagues now.
But Bachmann didn't last. By 2009, both Miller and Horowitz had grown disillusioned with her. Horowitz made another referral, this time to Arizona Representative John Shadegg. Miller joined Tea Party protests against President Barack Obama with Shadegg.
Then came the connection that would define his career.
Jeff Sessions and the Immigration Wars
In June 2009, Horowitz recommended Miller to Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who hired him as press secretary. Sessions was among the most hawkish members of Congress on immigration, and Miller had found his cause.
He threw himself into building relationships with organizations that wanted to restrict immigration: the Center for Immigration Studies, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and NumbersUSA. These groups operated on the margins of mainstream Republican politics, dismissed by many as nativist. Miller worked to bring them into the conversation.
By August 2014, Miller had risen to communications manager. He had also met Steve Bannon, the combative chairman of Breitbart News, and Andrew Breitbart himself. Both men recognized Miller from his high school advocacy. Bannon became an enduring ally.
That year, Miller's parents helped him purchase a $1 million condominium in CityCenterDC, a luxury development in the heart of the capital. The kid who had called into talk radio shows was now living among Washington's elite.
The Email Trail
In November 2019, a former Breitbart editor named Katie McHugh published a trove of roughly nine hundred emails Miller had sent to Breitbart News between March 2015 and June 2016. The correspondence revealed Miller's role as what one former Breitbart spokesman called "almost a de facto assignment editor."
The emails showed Miller sharing links to VDARE, a far-right website that promotes white nationalism, and to American Renaissance, a white supremacist online magazine. He expressed concern that Mexican survivors of Hurricane Patricia might be granted temporary protected status—a form of humanitarian relief for people from countries experiencing natural disasters or armed conflict. He complained that e-commerce websites had removed Confederate merchandise after a white supremacist murdered nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Perhaps most revealing, Miller urged Breitbart editors to read The Camp of the Saints, a 1973 French novel that depicts Western civilization being destroyed by mass immigration from India. The book has been called apocalyptically racist by critics and embraced as prophetic by immigration restrictionists. Miller apparently considered it essential reading.
The Gang of Eight Fight
Miller's most significant achievement in Sessions' office was helping to kill comprehensive immigration reform.
In 2013, four Democratic senators and four Republican senators—collectively known as the Gang of Eight—proposed the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act. The bill would have created a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants while strengthening border security. It had bipartisan support in the Senate, where it passed.
Miller and Sessions set out to destroy it in the House of Representatives.
Miller compiled a binder of talking points and research for House staffers. The bill was never even brought to a vote. In a Republican Party where many leaders believed embracing immigration reform was essential to winning future elections, Miller and Sessions had proved that the opposite approach could prevail.
They wrote a document called "Immigration Handbook for the New Republican Majority" in January 2015, explicitly rebutting the party's post-mortem after Mitt Romney's 2012 loss. Where Republican strategists saw a need to appeal to Hispanic voters, Miller and Sessions saw an opportunity to mobilize white voters anxious about demographic change.
Enter Trump
When Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his presidential campaign, calling Mexican immigrants "rapists" and "criminals," Stephen Miller was watching closely.
In an interview for the book Border Wars, Miller explained what attracted him to Trump: "He doubled down, breaking that apology-retreat cycle" that other politicians followed when criticized for controversial statements about race and immigration. Trump gave confidence to "a customarily dissatisfied populace."
Miller was particularly invested in defeating Marco Rubio, the Florida senator and son of Cuban immigrants who had been part of the Gang of Eight. Through Breitbart's Matthew Boyle, Miller connected with Sam Nunberg, a political consultant working for Trump. Even though Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was reluctant to hire him, Miller began contributing anyway, preparing Trump's immigration policies.
In January 2016, Miller officially joined the campaign as senior policy advisor. Steve Bannon asked him to start writing speeches. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, encouraged the arrangement.
The Speechwriter's Art
Miller intensified Trump's language. He embedded the phrase "radical Islam" into speeches whenever possible. He wrote Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, the address that painted a picture of "American carnage" requiring a strongman to fix.
By March 2016, Miller was opening act for Trump at rallies, warming up crowds before the candidate took the stage. By August, he had become national policy director. He was thirty years old.
The teenager who had lost his campaign for student announcer was now helping script one of the most unconventional presidential campaigns in American history. When Trump won the election, Miller wrote his inaugural address—the speech that described "American carnage" and promised to put "America First."
The Travel Ban
Seven days after Trump's inauguration, Miller's vision for immigration policy became reality.
Executive Order 13769, which Miller co-wrote with Steve Bannon, restricted travel from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. The order was signed on a Friday afternoon. By Saturday, chaos had erupted at airports across the country and around the world.
Green card holders—legal permanent residents of the United States—were detained. Families were separated. Refugees who had been approved for resettlement after years of vetting were turned away. Protesters flooded airports. Lawyers worked frantically to file emergency court challenges.
The rollout was so chaotic that even other Trump officials were caught off guard. The New York Times reported that Trump later urged his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to implement conventional protocols, including limiting the unfettered access that Bannon and Miller had enjoyed.
But the order itself reflected exactly what Miller had been working toward for years: a fundamental restriction on who could come to America, based explicitly on national origin and implicitly on religion.
Family Separation
The travel ban was just the beginning.
Miller became a central figure in the "zero tolerance" policy that led to family separations at the southern border. Under this policy, adults crossing the border illegally were criminally prosecuted, which meant their children—including infants and toddlers—were taken from them and placed in separate detention facilities.
The policy created scenes that shocked the conscience: children in cage-like enclosures, audio recordings of sobbing toddlers calling for their parents, reports of siblings separated from each other. The government had no coherent system for reuniting families, and some separations became effectively permanent.
Miller defended the policy as a necessary deterrent. In private, according to multiple reports, he pushed for it to be even more aggressive.
The Bureaucratic Knife Fighter
Within the Trump White House, two factions competed for influence. The "Washington wing" centered on Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Press Secretary Sean Spicer—Republicans from the party establishment who wanted to moderate Trump's most extreme impulses. The "Breitbart wing" revolved around Bannon and Miller, who wanted to push further and faster.
Miller proved remarkably adept at bureaucratic survival. When Bannon fell out of favor and eventually left the White House in August 2017, Miller told colleagues he wasn't affiliated with him. When Priebus was pushed out, Miller remained. When Kushner's star rose, Miller worked with his Office of American Innovation.
Chief of staff after chief of staff came and went. Miller stayed.
He led the purge of Obama administration holdovers from the federal government. He supported the firing of FBI Director James Comey and drafted the letter announcing Comey's dismissal. He reportedly helped remove a reference to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty—NATO's mutual defense clause—from a Trump speech in Brussels, alarming European allies who wondered whether America would honor its commitments.
After Trump
When Trump lost the 2020 election—or, as Trump and Miller would have it, when the election was stolen—Miller did not retreat from public life.
In April 2021, he founded America First Legal, a conservative legal advocacy organization designed as a right-wing counterweight to the American Civil Liberties Union. The organization filed lawsuits challenging Biden administration policies on immigration, diversity programs, and COVID-19 mandates.
Miller remained a fixture on conservative media, attacking the Biden administration's border policies and laying the groundwork for a potential Trump return.
Return to Power
In 2025, Miller got his wish.
Trump won the presidency again, and Miller returned to the White House as deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor—an even more powerful position than he had held in the first administration. The contrarian kid from Santa Monica, the talk-radio caller, the college columnist, had become one of the most powerful unelected officials in the American government.
His great-grandparents had fled persecution in the Pale of Settlement, seeking refuge in a country that would take them in. Their great-grandson now shapes policies determining who else will be allowed to do the same.
Whether this represents a betrayal of their legacy or its fulfillment depends entirely on your view of what America is supposed to be.
The Man Behind the Policy
Understanding Stephen Miller requires grappling with a contradiction at the heart of his story.
He is, by all accounts, brilliant at what he does. He identified immigration restriction as his cause early, built relationships systematically, survived White House infighting that claimed far more experienced operators, and ultimately shaped American policy in ways that will affect millions of lives for decades.
He is also, by the account of many who have worked with him and observed him, driven by something darker than mere policy preference. The emails to Breitbart, the reading recommendations, the longtime associations—they paint a picture of someone who sees demographic change not as a neutral phenomenon to be managed but as an existential threat to be fought.
His defenders say he is simply enforcing laws that exist and advocating for policies within the mainstream of American opinion. Immigration restriction, after all, polls well. Most Americans, when asked, say they want less immigration, not more.
His critics say the specific policies he has championed—the Muslim ban, family separation, the systematic dismantling of asylum protections—reveal something beyond ordinary restrictionism. They point to the sources he cited, the company he kept, the language he used.
The truth may be that Stephen Miller is exactly what he has always been: a contrarian who found his fight. The kid who argued with his Hebrew school classmates, who lost a student election by suggesting he was too good to pick up trash, who called into talk radio sixty-nine times before graduating high school—that kid grew up to be the man who shapes who gets to become American.
He has never apologized. He has never retreated. He has never stopped fighting.
And now, in 2025, he has more power than ever to implement his vision.