Republicans Aren’t Rushing to Defend Stephen Miller

The Trump administration’s immigration agenda is under scrutiny, and so are the officials overseeing it. That now includes Stephen Miller.

Miller, the architect behind President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement efforts, had one of the most highly criticized responses to the killing of Alex Pretti, who was fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday. Miller initially called Pretti a “would-be assassin” who “tried to murder federal law enforcement,” even as video from the scene did not appear to show him threatening agents with a weapon.

Miller’s remarks raised eyebrows even among some Republicans.

“I have no confidence in Mr. Miller,” said retiring Sen. Thom Tillis when asked by NOTUS if he was confident in Miller’s ability to lead the president’s immigration enforcement campaign.

“He spoke way too soon and gave the president bad advice on a terrorist brandishing a weapon, which we all know they’re walking back, and now he’s trying to cop out and say it was a breach of protocol,” Tillis said. “At the end of the day, somebody in leadership has to own bad outcomes.”

On Tuesday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not mention to congressional committees in a preliminary review that Pretti brandished the gun he was legally permitted to carry or threaten federal agents, as NOTUS previously reported. Miller, who has long been considered one of the most conservative voices on immigration policy in the Republican Party, also appeared to walk back his language in a statement obtained by NOTUS on Tuesday.

“The initial statement from DHS was based on reports from CBP on the ground,” he said in the statement. “Additionally, the White House provided clear guidance to DHS that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used for conducting fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors. We are evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following that protocol.”

The White House later tried to backtrack on this statement.

“Stephen was specifically referring to general guidance given to ICE ‘that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used… to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors,’ and officials would be examining why additional force protection assets may not have been present to support the operation,” a White House spokesperson said.

On Wednesday, the White House expressed support for Miller in his current role.

“Stephen Miller is one of President Trump’s most trusted and longest serving aides. The President loves Stephen,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement.

A White House official told NOTUS in response to an inquiry that “there will be no changes to anyone’s positions and anything else is simply Democrat wishcasting.”

Other Republican senators fell short of criticizing Miller, but they didn’t exactly rally around him either.

“It’s up to the president to make his decision on his cabinet,” Sen. Ted Budd told NOTUS. With regard to Miller’s change of messaging, the senator said, “this needs to be investigated, get all the facts on the table before rendering judgment.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy said Trump is “the most important person” to ask whether Miller should keep his job.

“If he has confidence, he’s going to keep Stephen. If not, not,” Cassidy told NOTUS. The senator declined to directly answer whether he was confident in Miller’s ability to do his job, instead saying, “I’m always reluctant to talk about feelings.”

“Have the American people lost confidence? Because the president is very aware, very sensitive to how the American people feel about issues,” Cassidy continued.

A January poll from Quinnipiac University, released before Pretti’s shooting but after Renee Good was killed, found that nearly half of 1,133 Americans registered to vote — 44% — disapproved of the work Miller is doing, while 34% approved and 23% did not offer an opinion.

Republicans are pressuring the Trump administration to follow protocol following the shootings by federal agents that resulted in Pretti’s and Good’s deaths, including by conducting independent investigations. Still, many fell short of directly criticizing the administration officials, like Miller, who have been most closely involved in the response.

“He serves at the pleasure of the president. It’s up to the president,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told NOTUS.

Some Republicans declined to comment or, like Thune, left it to the discretion of Trump.

“The president leads the immigration policy of the president, so who he gets advice from is entirely up to him,” Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS.

When pressed on whether that meant he was confident in Miller, Hawley said, “The president is entitled to have the staff he wants, to get the advice that he wants, and that’s really, you know, that’s a question for him.”

And other senators said they did trust Miller to run the administration’s immigration policy, but with caveats.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis said she disagreed with the calls for Miller to be removed from the job, but she quickly added that “they need to make some adjustments” to the president’s immigration enforcement efforts.

Meanwhile, Democrats’ calls for Kristi Noem to be removed as homeland security secretary continue to increase. In the House, more than three-fourths of the Democratic caucus, including moderate members and those in leadership, have co-sponsored articles of impeachment against Noem.

But some Senate Democrats worry about who could come next if she were to leave.

“I don’t want DHS Secretary Steve Miller,” Sen. Tim Kaine, one of seven Democrats who voted to confirm Noem, said Tuesday. “It’s hard to imagine that there are people worse, but actually there are people worse.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, appeared to nod at those concerns by calling on both Noem and “her boss Stephen Miller” to be removed from the administration.

But Sen. Gary Peters, another Democrat who supported Noem’s nomination, warned that, no matter what, “we’re going to get just another bad apple.”

“We have to fix DHS,” Peters added, pointing to the current negotiations to add reforms to the DHS funding bill. “Otherwise, it’s just a cast of horrible people like we see in the Trump administration, one after another, they’re all bad.”