Stephen Miller, who was chosen by President-elect Trump to be his deputy chief of staff for policy, said mass deportations will be Trump’s first priority.
Miller joined Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” where he was asked by host Maria Bartiromo about Trump’s plans to begin deportations on day one of his impending term.
Trump has plans to “issue a series of executive orders that seal the border shut and begin the largest deportation operation in American history,” Miller said, as highlighted by Mediaite.
Miller called on Republicans in Congress to pass a border funding package that would include a “historic” increase in border patrol agents, funding for military operations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) necessities.
Some Republicans have been talking about border security and immigration control “for decades,” Miller said.
“But with Donald Trump, this is something that is going to happen. It will be the most important and significant … domestic policy achievement in half a century,” he said.
Trump has tapped Tom Homan as his "border czar." They are looking to move swiftly on immigration promises that Trump made on the campaign trail.
Homan is an early proponent of family separations.
The president-elect has signaled he would use the U.S. military to support his mass deportation plan.
Immigration advocates are bracing for what changes are coming under the next administration, but there are questions about the legal, logistical and budgetary limitations the deportations would cause, including depleting the country’s workforce in particularly immigrant-dominated fields.