What Stephen Miller's promotion means for Minnesota
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Stephen Miller is President Trump's new chief of staff. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Trump's promotion of Stephen Miller to chief of staff could keep Minnesota under fire from the federal government.
Why it matters: Miller has been a driving force behind investigating the Somali community over the past year, according to a Washington Sun report on Friday and a Wall Street Journal report in February.
- In response to the Sun story, a White House spokesperson said Trump is fighting an "all-out war on fraud across the entire federal government."
Catch up quick: Miller's connection to Minnesota dates back to 2007, when he became then-Rep. Michele Bachmann's press secretary. He has a long history of attacking Minnesota's Somali community of about 87,000 people.
In the lead-up to last winter's Operation Metro Surge, Miller tied fraud by Somali Minnesotans, most of whom are U.S. citizens, to illegal immigration.
- "We should not be shocked, when you import a population whose primary occupation is pirate, that they are going to come here and steal everything we have," Miller said in a December 2025 interview, before adding, "they have to go home."
Operation Metro Surge eventually brought thousands of federal agents to Minnesota and sparked fierce opposition in the state.
- Not long after agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who had been the face of the immigration crackdown.
- "Everything I've done, I've done at the direction of the president and Stephen (Miller)," Noem told a person who relayed her remarks to Axios back in January.
Beyond Operation Metro Surge, the federal government has frozen or delayed hundreds of millions in funds tied to programs suspected of fraud.
- Most of the defendants in the $250 million Feeding Our Future scandal were Somali Minnesotans. As of May, 65 had pleaded guilty or been convicted.
The bottom line: While Trump is taking a softer tone about immigration after last week's big midterm wins for Democrats, that doesn't mean his new chief of staff is done going after Minnesota or its Somali community.
The other side: Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chaper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told Axios he's "deeply worried" that the promotion of Miller will lead to more targeting of Somali Americans and their businesses.
- "Now you have the chief architect being the chief of staff at the White House."
A spokesperson for Gov. Tim Walz said voters rejected Trump's "brutality" at the polls last week.
- "For over a year, Donald Trump has made Minnesota his personal obsession. He waged a campaign of retribution and weaponized the entirety of the federal government to punish our people. That ends now."