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As a senior adviser to President Trump, Stephen Miller is presiding over one of the fiercest attacks on immigration in U.S. history. But his rise to power didn't happen by chance: It was fueled by growing anti-immigration forces in the Republican Party. nyti.ms/2z4E5zw
Stephen Miller would have been out of step with the Republican Party of an earlier era: George W. Bush ran for president as a pro-immigration conservative. But others saw immigration as an electoral threat. By the time Miller got his first job in Washington, the tide was turning. 
In 2007, Miller arrived in Washington with no experience and no job. His big break: being hired as press secretary for Michele Bachmann, then a congresswoman. The next year, she ran for re-election using anti-immigrant language similar to what President Trump employs today.
Miller came to Washington after college. But his conservative politics stretch back to his high school days in liberal Santa Monica, California. He complained that school officials weren’t patriotic enough and took his case to talk radio, a pattern he replicated in years to come.
Miller became the protégé of Senator Jeff Sessions, mobilizing the white working-class base, cultivating a symbiotic relationship with conservative media and aligning with anti-immigration groups, approaches he has carried into his expansive role in the Trump administration.
In the White House, he influences virtually every part of immigration policy. Miller is a speechwriter, policy architect, personnel director, legislative aide, spokesman and strategist. At every step, he has pushed President Trump to take the hardest line. nyti.ms/31NiWq5
