Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) this week pushed back against the idea that President Donald Trump’s move to name Stephen Miller his White House chief of staff put a possible immigration deal at risk.
As dismal results trickled in for Republicans on election night last week, Trump first suggested he would be open to crafting legislation with Democrats on an immigration deal, and later suggested it could offer a path to legal status for “good people” who crossed the border illegally. But three days later, the president’s appointment of Miller, one of the sternest immigration hardliners in his administration, as chief of staff, triggered concerns that any compromise was unlikely.
LaLota took the opposite angle in an interview published Friday, arguing that Miller’s firm standing with Trump’s base could make him just the person the White House needs to seal the deal with skeptical Republicans. The New York lawmaker also told the Washington Sun that Miller’s influence with similar hardliners in Congress could help the White House strike a bipartisan deal. LaLota hails from New York’s 1st Congressional District, a historically purple area. He won reelection last week by just over 2 percentage points.
“I think there is a negotiation to be had, not just with Democrats, of bringing Republicans online,” LaLota said. “Stephen Miller could have a large hand on bringing those sorts of Republicans on board with some sort of compromise effort.”
“The decision-making starts at the president, and then he surrounds himself with staff members who can execute on his decision-making,” LaLota added.
While some Democrats have expressed openness to working with Trump to reform immigration, others slammed the door due to Miller’s involvement. On Monday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called Miller, who has advised the president since 2016 and is known as the architect behind the White House’s immigration agenda, “a stone-cold racist,” saying he holds “zero interest in working with that kind of individual.”
The White House has sought to frame Miller as someone who has always stood behind bipartisan proposals.
“Unlike the hardcore, partisan Democrats who refused to work with the President and blocked many of his popular policies, Stephen Miller has a track record of spearheading bipartisan efforts: public safety reform, making our cities such as Washington, D.C. and Memphis safe again, drug pricing transparency, and unleashing a nuclear energy renaissance,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said.
On Sunday, Trump said he believed his immigration policy had been “too tough,” and said it had hurt Republicans in the midterm elections, after he oversaw the deportation of around one million illegal immigrants since assuming office.
The president said he could work with the new Democratic majority in the House and Senate to enact reforms that would give “good people” with “good jobs” a path to legal status, rather than deporting them.
“I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out. But I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs that created one violation, or breaking of the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally,” Trump said during the CBS 60 Minutes interview. “A lotta people would say that it’s great. But a lotta people think it’s too tough.”
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“There is a large part of the country that think that they should be put out. And there’s a large part of the country that think that they should be allowed to stay if they’re good people working in a landscaping company, or working in a hotel, or doing something, right? And in some cases, paying taxes,” he continued. “There’s a large group of people [who] think that they should be allowed to stay.”
The White House has since said that Trump’s “strong immigration policy remains unchanged.”