Trump Reverses 50 Percent Visa Cut After Stephen Miller Push
President Trump reversed a planned cut in approved seasonal-worker visas after Stephen Miller pushed the reduction. The change came after the Labor Department’s Foreign Labor Certification office had said the administration would cut approvals by about 50 percent.
Trump made the reversal in late January after the killing of two protesters in Minneapolis. Two people with knowledge of the process said Miller was not involved in the walk-back.
Trump and Stephen Miller
Miller had been trying since his days as a Senate aide to reduce reliance on visas granted each year to the hospitality, construction and landscaping industries. White House insiders said he remains a top adviser, that his job is not in jeopardy and that he still has a singular relationship with Trump built over the past decade.
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said, “The President loves Stephen” and “And the White House staff respects him tremendously.” A former administration official said, “I think the president knows very, very well what he can go to Stephen for, and what he probably shouldn’t tell him if he doesn’t want to get an earful,” while an adviser said, “The president knows who he is, period.”
Minneapolis and the visa reversal
Trump recognized immediately after the second killing in Minneapolis, of Alex Pretti, that the policy needed to shift, according to advisers. He did not embrace Miller’s public description of Pretti as a “domestic terrorist.”
The reversal was described as one of the earliest signs that Miller’s influence was on the wane, even as immigration enforcement remained central to the administration. Trump later dismantled the roving Border Patrol strike forces Miller had encouraged, turned on Kristi Noem and handed control of the deportation program back to career law-enforcement officials.
White House role
Miller had shaped Trump’s second-term immigration agenda, but the sequence around the visa cut showed where Trump was willing to pull back. He made the decision with border czar Tom Homan and others after hearing concerns from hospitality-industry employers.
For employers that rely on seasonal workers, the immediate change was the pause in the planned 50 percent cut. The broader signal inside the White House was more complicated: Miller still holds influence, but Trump has shown he can reverse part of Miller’s agenda when he chooses to do so.
