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By Shane Croucher
Senior Editor
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On Friday, Donald Trump told 60 Minutes his immigration crackdown both helped and hurt him in the midterms. "I think it might be too tough," the Republican president said.
Yet, shortly afterward, he named Stephen Miller—the crackdown’s chief architect and advocate inside the White House—as his next chief of staff. Miller starts Monday.
The obvious reading is Trump has answered his resounding defeat by doubling down. As Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer put it: "That’s not a course correction. That’s a promotion."
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But there’s another reading. The midterms revealed a country that wants not open borders, but much of what Miller does, without most of his methods. People want Miller Lite.
The paradox of Trump’s choice is that the man best placed to serve that brew is also least likely to want to.
America Knows What It Wants
In February, an Ipsos poll found 45 percent of Americans backed deportation but were uncomfortable with the tactics, outnumbering those who backed both (26 percent) and those opposed to deportation (26 percent). That’s the Miller Lite constituency.
Majorities also rated secure borders (61 percent), enforcement of existing law (57 percent), and legal status for undocumented workers with clean records (60 percent) as highly important.
Immigration officer training and conduct standards scored highest: 80 percent, including 81 percent of Republicans.
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The timing flatters the findings a little. The poll came days after federal immigration officers killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and weeks after Renee Nicole Good was killed.
But a larger survey later that month found 61 percent backing deportation and 60 percent saying agents had gone too far. Three weeks before the election, 56 percent said Trump was going too far on deportations, yet immigration remained his best-rated issue.
America hasn’t turned against immigration enforcement. It has turned against a brute-force approach that cannot tell a gang member from a landscaper.
Trump Has Written the Spec for a Deal
Trump’s own report card for himself gave top marks for closing the border and removing serious criminals. What hurt him, he said, was the dragnet sweeping up workers whose only offense was entering illegally.
Much of the country, Trump added, would let them stay "if they’re good people working in a landscaping company, or working in a hotel," and "in some cases, paying taxes."
He described a divide: those who want everyone deported—a camp he acknowledged includes some in his administration—and those who would deport killers and drug dealers but cut a deal for long-settled people.
Trump wants that deal with Democrats, but he offered no terms. The popular formula for success—one that would be most popular with the largest number of Americans—is obvious.
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Keep illegal crossings low, violent offenders and recent crossers fast-tracked out, and final deportation orders enforced. Lose the daily arrest targets, Home Depot sweeps, and street confrontations that left two U.S. citizens dead.
Add published enforcement priorities, enforceable officer conduct rules, and, through Congress, a process for long-settled workers with clean records.
Most of that needs no act of Congress, and Miller now has enormous sway over it.
The Efficient Maximalist
Miller’s admirers describe a formidable administrator. Taylor Budowich, a former White House deputy chief of staff, called him the administration’s "most organized and competent operator."
Miller has a deep command of how executive power works. On his watch as deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser, the administration severely restricted asylum, all but shut down refugee admissions, and tightened access to green cards.
But that competence is the problem when coupled with his maximalist, accelerationist approach to illegal immigration.
In May 2025, Miller and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to aim for 3,000 arrests a day, triple the early pace.
The Justice Department later told a court ICE isn’t directed to meet numerical targets—though Miller had announced this one on Fox News.
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A daily target names a number, not a kind of person. It gets filled wherever people are easiest to find. It’s the street vendors, the schools, the farms, the warehouses—the places everyday undocumented migrants live and work.
Before the midterms, ICE’s target rose to roughly 2,700 arrests a day from a previous goal of 2,000, and officials say no order to ease off has come since.
Many arrestees have no criminal record beyond immigration violations. Trump’s landscapers are not collateral damage of Miller’s target. They are its very arithmetic. The target can’t be met without them.
The Democrats’ Dilemma
None of this gifts Democrats the middle. That preelection poll also found Americans roughly divided over which party they trust on immigration.
Abolishing ICE splits the voters it needs. A February Reuters/Ipsos survey found 63 percent of Democrats favored abolishing ICE, against about a third of independents. An Economist/YouGov poll days later, worded differently, found a bare majority of independents in favor.
The incoming majority mirrors that split. "Abolish ICE" rallied many progressives elected last week. Yet Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, poised to chair the House subcommittee that funds ICE, opposes defunding it and wants guardrails.
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The cycle’s marquee upset belonged to James Talarico, who flipped a long-red Texas Senate seat. He had argued that Joe Biden failed on the border and proposed focusing deportations on violent criminals, while condemning masked raids.
That is Miller Lite, sold from the left.
Imagine Trump put a clear offer on the table: The border stays secure, criminals still go, long-settled workers with clean records get a process, and officers get rules they can be held to.
If Trump offered that formula, Democrats would have to legislate with him on popular ground or let their unpopular abolish-ICE wing define them. Some are willing to work with Trump, Cuellar said, but "it takes two to have a deal."
Obstruction on an issue where they are historically distrusted would be a gamble, even if they have lots of political capital right now and would rather focus it on accountability, corruption, and the cost of living.
The Man Least Likely to Sell It
Trump has shown an appetite for moderating on immigration. Miller has shown none.
He has long argued for mass removals over enforcement confined to serious criminals. This may be his last and best chance.
"Unless there’s massive large-scale deportations by the millions, it will be irrevocable," Miller told Fox News’ Jess Watters in 2023.
As a Senate aide, he was, The Washington Post reported, instrumental in the campaign that killed the 2013 Gang of Eight bill. That bill was the high-water mark for a version of the trade Trump now seems to be floating: tougher border security in exchange for legal status.
Miller appears to believe in expansive presidential power and regards the Democratic Party as an extremist organization.
He sees the aggressive use of executive action as a legitimate and effective governing strategy. A Democratic Congress can’t change that, and the conservative-majority Supreme Court will ultimately set the limits.
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Moreover, the administration’s reading of the election gives him no reason to change course. Officials blame the losses largely on the economy, affordability, and the Iran war, not immigration, giving Miller no reason to change course.
Nor is anything forcing Miller’s hand. Congress has appropriated roughly $113 billion for ICE, available through fiscal 2029.
Democrats cannot claw that back over a Trump veto without two-thirds majorities they do not have.
Still, Trump has bent under severe backlash, ending the formal family-separation policy in 2018 and scaling back the Minneapolis crackdown after bipartisan outcry over the Good and Pretti killings.
Miller has compromised before too. In 2017, he urged fellow restrictionists to accept protections for Dreamers in exchange for tougher enforcement and an end to family-sponsored migration, though his wish list was largely a non-starter for Democrats.
He bends when Trump insists. The open question is whether Trump will, beyond lukewarmly conceding he was "too tough."
There for the Taking
Democrats take control in January, and likely House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries says they won’t work with Miller, despite Trump’s stated openness to work with his victorious opponents.
Trump’s opportunity is to corner Democrats by moving quickly toward public opinion on immigration. If he can push Miller that way, the pressure shifts to Democrats to define their position in response, testing the party’s fissures. But with Miller’s record, that’s a big if.
Or, Democrats could preempt this by pressing for enforcement against criminals and pathways to citizenship for honest, long-settled workers. It would force Trump and Miller to respond instead, and look either out of touch or chastened depending on their reaction.
Voters do not want open borders. Nor do they want immigration agents with a free hand. Between those positions sits a large, underserved market—there for the taking.
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