White House Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—dubbed “ICE Barbie” for her stylized anti-immigration photo ops—were enraged after learning that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins had called Trump and suggested that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents avoid deporting longtime workers in sectors heavily reliant on migrant labor, Axios reported.
Rollins’ intervention—which one insider described as “minimal”—appeared to sway the president. Last week, Trump floated the idea of carving out exemptions from his mass deportation plans specifically to avoid targeting non-criminal workers on farms and in hotels.
An official policy shift followed soon after. Senior ICE official Tatum King informed regional ICE offices Thursday that “investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meatpacking plants), restaurants, and operating hotels” would be paused.
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By Monday, the Department of Homeland Security reversed course, notifying staff that the previous guidelines were scrapped and that ICE would resume raids on agricultural businesses, hotels, and restaurants, The Washington Post reported.
Tag Archives: Stephen Miller
Washington Post: Many here wanted Trump to enforce immigration law, but ‘it’s going overboard’
Interviews with more than four dozen people in this swing region encompassing northern Los Angeles County show how much tactics matter in the immigration debate.
Jesus Martinez, a 36-year-old aerospace worker, said he initially supported President Donald Trump’s decision to send the military to quell immigration protests in California. But he has grown increasingly uneasy after seeing images of ICE raids near schools and at workplaces where families are being separated.
“It’s going overboard. It’s too much,” said Martinez, a former Democrat who supported Trump in 2020 and sat out the 2024 election.
“They said only criminals, and now they’re saying, ‘Well, they did come in illegally, so they are criminals,’” he added. “Hispanics or Latinos that voted for Trump, they didn’t think he was going to go after kids.”
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In this working-class and heavily Latino area known for its wildflower blooms, a region that moved toward Trump in the 2024 election, voters from both parties voiced support for Trump’s promises to deport immigrants who are here illegally, especially those with criminal records. But they drew lines — some over the scope of those deportations and, to a lesser extent, over his decision to crack down on immigration protesters with the military.
“When you already have aggressive people and then you’re sending in people like that, I feel like it just makes it kind of worse,” said Christian Strand, a 19-year-old EMT from Palmdale, a majority-Latino city, referring to the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines. “It’s creating more of a pushback, because the aggression is rising.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/17/trump-california-immigration-voters
Guardian: Trump orders Ice raids on farms and hotels after pausing them days earlier
Reversal comes days after president posted on Truth Social his ‘very aggressive’ raids were hurting farmers and hotels
Donald Trump has abandoned his brief immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) reprieve for farm and hotel workers, ordering the agency’s raids in those sectors to resume after hardliners crushed a pause that lasted just four days.
The whiplash reversal, first reported by the Washington Post, exposes the dysfunction gripping the president’s deportation agenda, where competing advisers battle over policy while Trump lurches between contradictory positions.
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The flip-flop also follows Trump’s erratic pattern on major policies – from threatening then retreating on mass global tariffs to wavering on federal spending cuts – as different factions fight for his ear.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/17/ice-raids-farms-hotels-trump
Mediaite: Stephen Miller’s Wife Demanded Government Agency Lie to Cover Up a Bogus Elon Musk Fraud Claim: NY Times
Katie Miller — a top Trump administration aide who is married to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — ordered a government agency to lie in an effort to cover up a bogus claim by Elon Musk, according to a blockbuster New York Times report.
According to a piece Monday co-authored by Times reporters Alexandra Berzon, Nicholas Nehamas and Tara Siegel Bernard, employees at the Social Security Administration (SSA) were told to confirm Musk’s claim — made at a rally in March — that 40 percent of all calls to the agency’s service lines were scams.
“The number is 40 percent,” Katie Miller reportedly told the acting Social Security Administrator Leland Dudek in an April 1 call. “Do not contradict the president.”

Mediaite: ‘Who the Hell is in Charge?’ Geraldo Slams Trump’s Re-Reversal on ICE Raids — Suggests Stephen ‘Draco’ Miller is Really Running Things
Geraldo Rivera lashed out at his former friend President Donald Trump over a re-reversal on ICE raids, even questioning whether Trump is actually in charge of his own White House.
“Come on Mr. President, you’re the one the American people elected not Stephen Miller. He doesn’t have a compassionate bone in his body. The problem of immigration can’t be solved with hate,” Rivera wrote in a Tuesday post in reaction to news that Homeland Security is reversing guidance recently issued stating that immigration raids at worksites and farms would be temporarily suspended.
The Washington Post was first to report on the new guidance being reversed this week, with ICE getting the greenlight to continue worksite raids.

Raw Story: Trump delivered a ‘slap in the face to Stephen Miller’ with pivot: MSNBC analyst
A decision by Donald Trump to urge ICE agents to change where they snatch up unsuspecting immigrants was a direct rebuke to White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller.
That is the opinion of former Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin as she spoke to MSNBC’s Ali Velshi on Sunday morning.
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Attributing the change of heart by the Trump administration to “donor pressure,” Rubin explained, “All of the ag interests and the hotel owners and Trump himself who rely on undocumented immigrants, don’t like this.”
“You know, who could have predicted that this would unravel the economy?” she asked sarcastically. “Who could have predicted that this would be disruptive to American society and the economy? Well, all of us have.”
“And this is really a slap in the face to Stephen Miller and those people who thought that somehow [they were] going to deport 11 million people, it is never going to happen,” she predicted.
Stephen Miller is an ass. Nobody will be shedding any tears for him if his feathers are ruffled.
Raw Story: Trump just went ‘two bridges too far even for MAGA’: ex-GOP strategist
Donald Trump’s latest actions amount to “two bridges too far even for a lot of MAGA folks,” according to a former Republican strategist on Saturday.
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First, Wilson noted the “assault” of Senator Padilla, who was tackled while speaking out at a press conference for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
The second, Wilson said, was sending the Marines into LA.
After it was suggested that Republicans “lost their footing” when it comes to immigration, Wilson said, “I think Senator Padilla being assaulted, to my mind, and maybe you have another moment in the week you think is different, I think the Marines being deployed and Senator Padilla being assaulted, were two bridges too far even for a lot of MAGA folks.”
Wilson’s guest agreed, calling the assault a “flex of muscle” that will backfire on the administration.
Sacramento Bee: Seven Men Deported in Violation of Court Order, Judge Says
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy has criticized the Trump administration for expediting the deportation of seven men to South Sudan, violating court orders and due process. The administration reportedly failed to provide sufficient notice before these actions, jeopardizing the deportees’ safety. Murphy has allowed the convicted individuals to remain in U.S. custody abroad on a military base in Djibouti, where they can raise concerns about potential violence in South Sudan.
Murphy wrote, “Defendants have mischaracterized this Court’s order, while at the same time manufacturing the very chaos they decry.” Murphy added, “By racing to get six class members onto a plane to unstable South Sudan, clearly in breach of the law and this Court’s order, Defendants gave this Court no choice but to find that they were in violation of the Preliminary Injunction.”
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Murphy wrote, “From this course of conduct, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than that defendants invite lack of clarity as a means of evasion.”
AFP: Balloons, bubbles, tear gas: LA anti-Trump protests turn chaotic
For hours, thousands of people in Los Angeles peacefully celebrated their defiance of US President Donald Trump Saturday with music, marching, bubbles and balloons — then police unexpectedly moved in, and chaos and confusion broke out.
The demonstration — part of the nationwide “No Kings” day of protests across the country — was by far the largest in more than a week of protests ignited by anger against immigration raids the Trump administration has been carrying out across the country’s second-largest city.
Like those before it, Saturday’s had been largely peaceful. A march that began in the morning had finished, with demonstrators milling about on a sunny afternoon as the scene took on the air of a street festival.
But then:
Then police unexpectedly began moving people away from the area, igniting confusion and anger among demonstrators caught off guard and unsure of where to go.
Police on horseback pushed crowds back as law enforcement fired tear gas and flash-bang grenades hours ahead of an 8:00 pm (0300 GMT) curfew.
A police spokeswoman later told local TV channel KTLA that a “small group of agitators” had begun throwing rocks, bottles and fireworks at officers, prompting the decision to order the crowd to disperse.
Independent: She was Stephen Miller’s high school class president. Now she’s fighting his deportation efforts
California attorney is fighting Miller’s mass deportation efforts by working as an immigration lawyer
Cynthia Santiago, an attorney in Southern California, won her high school presidential class race the same year Stephen Miller, the current White House Deputy Chief of Staff, lost the class speaker race. More than 20 years later, Santiago is trying to fight Miller’s mass deportation efforts.
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Recalling the day she won her class election at Santa Monica High School, Santiago said that Miller was “booed” off stage for giving an incendiary speech about picking up trash.
A video of the moment, posted online years ago, shows Miller on stage asking his fellow students, “Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash, when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?”
A school newspaper clipping, obtained by The Daily Beast, says Miller’s microphone was turned off and he was escorted off stage for what school officials said was going “over time.”
Writing for the Santa Monica Lookout in 2002, Miller advocated for all announcements to be written in English only, claimed “very few” Hispanic students were in honors classes, and asserted that the school’s political correctness would make Osama bin Laden “feel very welcome at Santa Monica High School.”
It seems Stephen Miller was brain dead at an early age and has never recovered.