By Ted Hesson, Richard Cowan, Nolan D. McCaskill and Kristina Cooke
WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to forge ahead with his aggressive immigration crackdown driven by top aide Stephen Miller and a new homeland secretary nominee who shares Trump's hardline view, current and former U.S. officials and lawmakers said.
The Republican president fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday after months of controversy over heavy-handed immigration enforcement
tactics and lawmaker questions about government contracts and turmoil within her department.
But Miller - the White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda - retains control of the issue, three U.S. officials said. And Trump’s pick to become homeland secretary, U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, is viewed as closely aligned with Trump’s approach.
“Stephen is a survivor,” one of the officials said, requesting anonymity to discuss internal dynamics. The official said Noem’s firing was not a referendum on Trump's restrictive agenda, but rather on the execution of it.
In response to a request for comment, a White House official said Miller helps coordinate a wide range of issues - from immigration to counter-cartel operations - and is "working to ensure the President's policy agenda is implemented."
The Department of Homeland Security and Mullin's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump won back the White House in 2024 with a campaign that heavily focused on stopping illegal immigration and ramping up deportations. Immigration was one of Trump's best-polling issues after returning to office - and a key focus for the Republican Party broadly. But amid backlash over his aggressive enforcement in U.S. cities, support for his immigration approach declined in recent months, Reuters/Ipsos polls show.
Republicans currently hold narrow majorities in both chambers of the U.S. Congress but are heading into midterm elections in November that threaten their control on Washington.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday in an X post related to Noem’s dismissal that Trump’s immigration goals remained unchanged.
“President Trump’s immigration agenda is keeping our border secure and deporting illegal alien criminals from our country, and it will continue without interruption,” she said.
Under Noem’s leadership, DHS sent thousands of federal immigration agents to Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and other Democratic-led cities to seek out immigration offenders, sweeping through residential neighborhoods and chasing day laborers in Home Depot parking lots.
But after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis - Renee Good and Alex Pretti - the administration said it would move to a less public-facing “targeted” approach to immigration arrests.
Current and former federal immigration officials said there had been no immediate policy shift since Noem’s departure was announced, but several said they expected the administration to continue to avoid high-profile surges into U.S. cities following the fallout in Minneapolis.
MULLIN SEEN AS TOUGH ON BORDER SECURITY
Mullin, 48, became a senator in 2023 after a decade in the U.S. House of Representatives. Like Noem, he is a rancher and owns a cattle ranch in Oklahoma that also serves as a wedding venue, among other businesses.
Even as a freshman, Mullin has stood out from the crowd of 100 senators, at times presiding over the Senate wearing a large, light-colored cowboy hat.
He had a short-lived career as a mixed martial arts fighter and garnered widespread media attention in 2023 when he rose from his chair during a Senate hearing to challenge Teamsters President Sean O'Brien to "stand your butt up" and fight.
Mullin voted for a Republican-backed funding package last year that devoted a historic $170 billion to immigration enforcement through September 2029 and backs core elements of Trump’s immigration platform.
Republican lawmakers praised Mullin after the news that Trump would nominate him for DHS secretary, a position that requires majority confirmation in the Senate.
“He's strong on the border and that's what we need,” Republican Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri told reporters on Thursday. “The deportations will continue."
Noem was sharply criticized by both Democrats and Republicans for swiftly saying Good and Pretti were engaged in “domestic terrorism” after they were killed and before a full investigation.
Mullin similarly portrayed Pretti as a threat despite video evidence that undercut that claim. He said Pretti was "a deranged individual" who had a loaded pistol and intended "to cause max damage," during an interview with Fox News on January 24, the day Pretti was killed.
Democrats on Capitol Hill welcomed Noem’s removal but said the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement still needed to change. Democrats have blocked funding for DHS since mid-February in a push to force the White House to moderate its tactics.
Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said funding talks are being run out of the White House and that he does not expect Noem’s firing to break the stalemate.
“I think we’re better off without her, but she wasn’t running the department,” Murphy said on Thursday. “Stephen Miller runs that department and will continue to run the department so I don’t really think much will change.”
(Reporting by Ted Hesson, Richard Cowan, Nolan McCaskill in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Marisa Taylor; Editing by Nia Williams)
