First lady Melania Trump complained to President Donald Trump about people she personally knew being deported under his administration's aggressive immigration crackdown, The Wall Street Journal reported. Following her complaints, the president told aides that Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and architect of his enforcement policies, had gone too far, according to the newspaper.
The Journal portrays a president who shifted his stance on immigration throughout the year, at times demanding an even tougher crackdown while privately expressing concern about the severity of deportations.
Melania Trump, who was born in Slovenia and became a U.S. citizen in 2006, has seldom weighed in publicly on her husband's immigration agenda. A rare exception came in June 2018, during his first term, when her office said she "hates to see children separated from their families" at the border.
Not the first sign of doubts
This is not the first report of the first lady's influence on the issue. In March, the Journal reported that she took part in discussions Trump held with top advisers on how to reset the crackdown, after a January surge of federal immigration agents in Minneapolis ended with the deaths of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and a public outcry. Trump concluded that voters had turned against the term "mass deportation" and urged a renewed focus on catching "bad guys," according to that report. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was later replaced by Markwayne Mullin.
At the time, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson rejected talk of a shift. "Nobody is changing the administration's immigration enforcement agenda," she said, adding that the president's "highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals."
Miller's 3,000-a-day target
Miller has been the driving force behind the policy. He pressed for 3,000 immigration arrests a day to reach a goal of 1 million deportations in 2025, a target the Department of Homeland Security did not come close to meeting. By March, daily arrests had fallen to about 1,200, down from roughly 1,500 at the height of the Minneapolis operation, the Journal reported.
In May, advisers told The Atlantic that Trump had complained Miller "sometimes goes too far," after the aide called Pretti, a U.S. citizen killed by border agents in Minnesota, a "domestic terrorist," a label the president declined to repeat. White House communications director Steven Cheung answered that "the president loves Stephen," and insiders said Miller still leads daily immigration briefings.
Removals keep climbing
The internal second thoughts have not slowed the deportation machine. ICE reported 356,389 removals in fiscal year 2026 as of mid-July, with 65,765 people in detention, according to agency figures reported by ABC News. Arrests peaked in June, when ICE and Customs and Border Protection together made just over 43,000.
The Journal's account lands as Republicans argue over the lessons of Tuesday's midterm rout, in which Democrats took both chambers of Congress. Vice President JD Vance, who blamed the defeat mainly on the Iran war, has warned that "anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you."
Photos: Clash Report (archive); Gage Skidmore and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement / Wikimedia Commons
