Stephen Miller to be named deputy chief of policy in Trump administration

President-elect Donald Trump took steps Monday toward his campaign promises to close the border to migrants and deport undocumented immigrants on a massive scale with two senior appointments to the incoming White House.

Stephen Miller – a former speechwriter and campaign adviser who helped develop policies during Trump’s first administration, including the ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries and the separation of families at the border – is expected to become a deputy chief of staff, according to the people briefed on the selection, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it was not yet publicly authorized. He would work under incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who was Trump’s co-campaign manager.

Tom Homan, a former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will serve as “border czar,” in charge of border security as well as deportations, Trump announced on social media late Sunday.

Spokespeople for the transition and Miller did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

Trump campaigned by pledging to close the U.S.-Mexico border and order a largest-ever deportation operation on his first day in office. He has said he wants to model the operation after an Eisenhower-era program that used military tactics to round up and remove migrant workers, sometimes transporting them in dangerous conditions that led to some deaths. Former officials and experts said the proposal presents logistic obstacles because of shortages of ICE officers, detention space and immigration judges.

In his first post-election interview, Trump told NBC that he is committed to the operation irrespective of cost. “They’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here,” he said of undocumented immigrants. “There is no price tag.”

Miller was widely expected to take a senior role in a second administration. He increasingly traveled with Trump in the last three months of the campaign and became a regular warm-up speaker at rallies.

“America is for Americans and Americans only,” he said Oct. 27 at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Miller has suggested supplementing ICE resources with military planes and National Guard troops, including sending troops from Republican-governed states into neighboring states with Democratic governors. He proposed adding detention space by using tents or “camps.”

Trump repeatedly said during the campaign that he would bring Homan back into a second administration, including specifically as a border czar. Homan oversaw a rise in deportations under the Obama administration. During the Trump administration, he joined Miller in promoting the “zero tolerance” policy that led to separating thousands of undocumented children from their parents at the border. Trump abandoned the policy in response to public outcry over visuals of children in detention and audio of children wailing.

Homan defended the policy, saying “it worked,” and blaming parents for putting their families in that situation.

“I’m sick and tired hearing about the family separation. … Bottom line is, we enforced the law,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2023.

Trump has declined to rule out reimposing family separation in a second term.

“I know exactly what I’m doing, and this is the second time I’ve come out of retirement for this president, because it matters,” Homan said in a Monday morning interview on Fox News. He said retired agents and military officers have called him asking to volunteer to assist. Homan said the operation would prioritize “public safety threats.”

Both Homan and Miller were involved in Project 2025, the right-wing policy blueprint that Trump repeatedly disavowed during the campaign. Homan was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which organized the coalition behind the project and is listed as a contributor in the 900-page policy book. Miller’s organization, America First Legal, was part of the project coalition, and his deputy, Gene Hamilton, wrote the policy book’s chapter about the Justice Department.

On Monday, Trump also named Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She became House Republican Conference chair in 2021, succeeding former representative Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who broke with Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Stefanik arrived in Congress in 2015 as a moderate but evolved into an outspoken Trump supporter, including one of the defense team for his first impeachment in 2019. Her questioning of elite university presidents last year over handling of antisemitism on campus contributed to two of their resignations.

Trump said Sunday that he would not offer administration jobs to his previous U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, or to his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. Both are considered more hawkish on overseas intervention than Trump’s current advisers. Pompeo explored a primary challenge to Trump in 2023 but did not follow through. Haley was the last primary rival in the race and endorsed Trump at the Republican National Convention. She repeatedly offered to campaign with him but he continued to criticize her, and they never appeared together.