Stephen Miller

Miller serves as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor, a dual-hatted role that Axios and ProPublica reporting described as effectively calling the shots at DHS ³. His office coordinates with both DHS and DOJ leadership through weekly meetings on election enforcement plans ². He drafted a plan to give the White House direct influence over DHS, FBI, and DOJ investigations, which would centralize operational control of federal law enforcement in his office ³.

On immigration, Miller writes the executive orders and sets arrest quotas of 3,000 per day while Border Czar Tom Homan executes the resulting deportation operations ¹. Those operations run on Palantir's ImmigrationOS targeting platform ⁶. On election enforcement, Miller's office coordinates with DOJ's Pam Bondi on voter roll demands and investigations ² and directs Heather Honey, the DHS election integrity deputy, through those weekly enforcement meetings ³.

Miller's financial disclosure reported $100,001 to $250,000 in Palantir Technologies stock held in a brokerage account for one of his three children. Under federal ethics law (18 U.S.C. § 208), financial interests held in a minor child's account are attributed to the parent and trigger the same conflict restrictions as direct holdings ⁴. Ethics experts cited in POGO's investigation concluded that Miller was required to recuse from decisions affecting Palantir, which he did not do ⁵.

Palantir holds the primary ICE contracts executing the policy Miller designs: the $30 million ImmigrationOS sole-source contract, the FALCON database, the ICM case management system, and the ELITE targeting tool, which generates confidence-scored deportation dossiers from Medicaid and DMV data ⁴. Miller's 3,000-arrests-per-day quota depends on the throughput of these platforms.

Miller co-founded America First Legal Foundation in February 2021 and served as its President and Executive Director until returning to the White House in January 2025 ³. During that four-year period he drew $527,000 in annual compensation from AFL ¹. Co-founder Gene Hamilton — also a Sessions alumnus and key coordination partner from Trump 1.0 — served as Vice President and General Counsel at $645,000 per year before rotating to Deputy White House Counsel in January 2025 ¹.

AFL's revenue rose from $6.4 million in 2021 to $44.4 million in 2022, then fell to $9.6 million in 2023 before recovering to $32 million in 2024. The 2022 increase coincided with Elon Musk's $50 million-plus donation to Citizens for Sanity, an organization run by AFL employees ⁴. In 2024, AFL received $21.3 million from DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund that does not disclose individual donors, up from $3.2 million the prior year. Russ Vought, now OMB Director, served as AFL board treasurer during this period — a role that preceded his current position overseeing DHS and ICE appropriations ⁶.

AFL's litigation portfolio during Miller's tenure tracked the enforcement agenda he later implemented from the White House: NVRA lawsuits demanding voter roll purges across Arizona counties, challenges to refugee admissions, and DEI-focused employment litigation ⁶. Personnel movement from AFL to government extended beyond Miller and Hamilton: Reed Rubinstein (AFL SVP) was confirmed as State Department Legal Adviser in May 2025, and John Zadrozny, a FAIR alumnus who carried out Miller's immigration agenda at USCIS during Trump 1.0, remained part of the network ⁶.

Miller entered Washington immigration policy through Jeff Sessions's Senate office, joining as press secretary in 2009 and rising to chief of communications. He met Gene Hamilton in Sessions's orbit, and Hamilton became his closest policy collaborator across both Trump administrations ¹. The Sessions-Miller-Hamilton group coordinated immigration policy in Trump 1.0 largely without the knowledge of other senior officials ⁶.

Miller's connection to Steve Bannon dates to a 2012 dinner attended by Bannon and Sessions. From 2015 to 2016, while still working for Sessions, Miller sent approximately 900 emails to Breitbart editors — described by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which obtained them through a leak in 2019, as functioning as a de facto assignment editor directing coverage that included content from white nationalist websites. Bannon recruited Miller to the Trump campaign in January 2016 ⁶.

Miller's pre-government formation included executive roles at the Duke Conservative Union and Students for Academic Freedom, where he encountered Richard Spencer. He developed working relationships with organizations in the Tanton network — FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA — and collaborated with David Horowitz's Freedom Center ⁷.

As of March 2026, Miller's office runs weekly meetings with DHS and DOJ leadership on election enforcement plans, coordinating across Homeland Security Investigations, the Justice Department, and the White House ². The DOJ Voting Section, restructured under the new administration to prioritize voter roll maintenance over access protection, operates within the policy framework Miller's office sets ³.

Heather Honey serves as DHS election integrity deputy and participates in those weekly meetings. Miller's office separately coordinates with Pam Bondi's DOJ on voter roll demands sent to states ². The resulting structure — HSI conducting field investigations while DOJ pursues data through litigation — resembles the approach AFL took from the outside during 2021–2025, when it filed NVRA lawsuits against Arizona counties demanding noncitizen voter roll removals ⁷.

Miller is married to Katie Miller, who served as communications director for DOGE while Stephen held the Deputy Chief of Staff role. Katie simultaneously held a seat on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, placing DOGE's public messaging, White House enforcement policy, and intelligence advisory functions within one household.

Before joining DOGE, Katie Miller served as a Senior Advisor to Building America's Future from September 2024. P2 Pathway Public Affairs, a firm she co-operated with Generra Peck and Phil Cox, received $210,000 from Building America's Future during that period.