Jordan Gonzalez | Abogado de Inmigración EE.UU. — Madrid

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Sobre mí

Crecí entre idiomas, fronteras e identidades. Nací en Chicago, en una familia con raíces mexicanas y estadounidenses de origen irlandés, y me crié en el Valle del Río Grande, entre Texas y el norte de México. La inmigración no es solo mi profesión: es parte de mi propia historia.

Stephen Miller as Chief of Staff: What It Means for Immigration

Jordan Gonzalez

Written November 7, 2026, two days before Stephen Miller takes over as chief of staff. Some House races and the Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi are still being counted.

Four days after voters handed Democrats both chambers of Congress, President Trump made his first big personnel move. Democrats picked up seven Senate seats and are on pace for their largest House majority since 2008. Susie Wiles, his chief of staff since the start of this term and the first woman to hold the job, submitted her resignation on Thursday. On Friday, Trump announced on Truth Social that Stephen Miller will replace her starting Monday, November 9, and that Wiles will move to his political operation. Asked about it, Trump told reporters he “wanted to make a change.” Semafor, citing a source, reported that he blamed Wiles in part for the midterm losses.

Miller needs little introduction to anyone who works in immigration. He joined Trump’s 2016 campaign as a speechwriter after working for then-Senator Jeff Sessions, served as a senior adviser in the first term, and has spent this term as deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser. Admirers and critics alike describe him as the architect of the immigration agenda in both administrations.

Before the election I wrote about what a new Congress can and can’t do on immigration. This week answered the other half of the question: what the White House intends to do with the power it still has. My aim here isn’t to tell you what to think of Miller. It’s to explain, as a practitioner, what this change is likely to mean for immigrants, for employers, and for people with cases in the system.

What a chief of staff actually does

The job isn’t in the Constitution, and it doesn’t require Senate confirmation. Its scope depends almost entirely on the president. In practice, the chief of staff controls who gets time with the president and which options and memos reach his desk, runs the policy process across the White House, deals with the Cabinet and Congress, and manages crises and staffing.

The president still makes the big calls. The chief of staff shapes how those calls get made, and which ones come up at all. That is why this appointment matters more than most personnel news.

1. The architect now runs the building

Wiles was generally seen as a manager: someone who kept the process orderly and stayed out of the spotlight. Miller is a policy person. Until now his influence ran mainly through immigration and homeland security. Starting Monday, he oversees the flow of policy across the entire White House.

Now add the new Congress. With Democrats running both chambers from January, new restrictive immigration legislation has no realistic path. That doesn’t mean the agenda slows down. It means it moves almost entirely through executive action: presidential proclamations, USCIS policy memos, State Department visa pauses, regulations, and enforcement operations.

That is already how most of the past two years worked. The travel ban was expanded in December 2025 to cover nationals of 39 countries. In January 2026, the State Department paused immigrant visas for nationals of 75 countries. USCIS rewrote its approach to adjustment of status (in Spanish) through a policy memo. And in October, the Labor Department stopped accepting or processing green card labor certifications for eight large employers. None of these needed a vote in Congress.

For clients, that means policy by memo. Changes can arrive abruptly, sometimes effective the day they’re announced, with little or no notice. The people most exposed are those who are one step away from filing when the rules change.

2. Congress gets a microscope, not a brake

Democrats will have real tools starting January 3. They won’t have a brake.

The money is largely locked in. As I explained before the election, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and this year’s Secure America Act gave ICE and CBP funding that can be spent through September 2029. Gabriel Sanchez of the Brookings Institution told the Philadelphia Inquirer that Congress approved nearly $240 billion for immigration purposes in 2025 and 2026. Clawing any of that back would take a new law, and the president would veto it.

Enforcement priorities also belong to the executive branch. The Immigration and Nationality Act puts the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of administering and enforcing the immigration laws (INA § 103), and a separate statute makes the Secretary responsible for setting national immigration enforcement policies and priorities (6 U.S.C. § 202). Morgan Bailey, a former DHS deputy chief of staff, made the point to the Inquirer: the election changes the politics around the agenda more than the administration’s ability to carry it out.

What Democrats gain is a microscope. Majorities run the hearings, issue subpoenas, can ask the Government Accountability Office to audit how enforcement money is spent, and set the terms of future budgets. Rep. Robert Garcia, expected to chair the House Oversight Committee, responded to the appointment by saying Miller “should lawyer up.” Rep. Bennie Thompson, who is seeking the gavel of the House Homeland Security Committee, has already asked DHS to preserve records and produce documents by December 2, and Sen. Maggie Hassan, expected to lead the Senate’s homeland security committee, is hiring investigators.

Confirmations change too. Any new nominee to lead ICE, CBP, or another part of DHS will need a Senate run by Democrats. I expect more acting officials as a result, which is what administrations tend to do when the Senate won’t cooperate.

None of this stops enforcement on its own. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said deportations will continue, and the White House can slow-walk investigations, resist subpoenas, and claim executive privilege. My own expectation is that enforcement continues at roughly its current pace well into 2027.

One angle lawyers shouldn’t overlook: documents that come out of congressional investigations can become public, and public records can be used in litigation. Internal guidance, data, and emails that an agency would never volunteer can end up supporting a challenge in federal court.

3. Legal immigration is the main battlefield, and the courts are the real check

Much of the public debate focuses on the border and on ICE. For my practice, the bigger story is legal immigration. Miller has argued for lower overall immigration for a long time, not just less illegal immigration. In 2017 he was one of the White House’s strongest backers of the RAISE Act, a bill that would have cut legal immigration roughly in half. It never passed. Several of its goals, such as ending the diversity visa lottery and sharply reducing refugee admissions, have since been pursued through executive action.

Here is where the main measures stand as of this week:

  • The travel ban. Entry restrictions on nationals of 19 countries took effect in June 2025 and were expanded to 39 countries in December 2025, effective January 1, 2026.
  • The USCIS holds. In late 2025, USCIS paused green cards, work permits, and naturalization for nationals of those countries and froze asylum decisions more broadly. It lifted the asylum freeze for most other countries on March 30, 2026. In June, a federal court in Rhode Island held the hold policies unlawful in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS and ordered processing to resume. On August 14, the First Circuit let USCIS keep applying its re-review policy while the appeal goes forward, but left the rest of the ruling in place. The case didn’t cover the State Department’s visa restrictions or the entry ban itself.
  • The immigrant visa pause. In January 2026, the State Department paused immigrant visas for nationals of 75 countries. The Migration Policy Institute calculates that those countries accounted for 46 percent of the immigrant visas issued in fiscal year 2024.
  • H-1B fees. The $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions for workers abroad, imposed in September 2025, was vacated by a federal court in Massachusetts in June 2026. The First Circuit refused to pause that ruling in July, and as of late September the fee was not being collected while the government appeals. A federal court in Washington, D.C., upheld the fee in a separate case in December 2025, and that case is also on appeal. In September, a new proclamation extended the fee through September 2027. Separately, DHS has proposed a $103,265 fee on all cap-subject H-1B petitions, including for workers already in the United States. That rule isn’t final.
  • Green card sponsorship. On October 8, the Labor Department stopped accepting or processing PERM labor certifications for eight companies, including Microsoft, Adobe, Infosys, and Tata Consultancy Services, with no end date. H-1B workers at those companies who are approaching the six-year limit are the most exposed.
  • Humanitarian and lottery programs. Diversity visa issuance was halted in December 2025, refugee admissions fell to the lowest level since the program began in 1980, and the parole programs of the last administration were shut down.

Taken together, the effect is large. A Cato Institute analysis by David Bier, reported by PBS NewsHour in April, estimated that legal immigration had fallen by about 132,000 people a month, a much bigger drop than the decline in illegal entries.

Don’t expect Congress to change this through legislation either. Semafor reports that Miller helped kill a bipartisan immigration deal in 2018, and that his promotion cools the prospects for any deal in the next Congress. I wouldn’t plan around legislative relief for Dreamers, H-1B reform, or anything similar before 2029.

That leaves the courts. For the next two years, litigation will matter more than lobbying. The H-1B fee and the USCIS holds show how this works: policies made by proclamation or memo can be challenged under the Administrative Procedure Act, and some of them have been set aside. The reverse is also true. Anything done by executive action can be undone by executive action, by this administration or a future one. And the appeals in both cases are still pending, so a lower-court win can still be narrowed or reversed.

Two readings of the election

It would be easy to read the midterms as a verdict on Miller’s agenda. The evidence is more mixed than that, and both sides deserve a fair hearing.

Critics point to the NBC News Exit Poll, in which 57 percent of voters said the administration’s immigration enforcement had gone too far, 23 percent said it was about right, and 21 percent said it had not gone far enough. Fifty-nine percent disapproved of ICE, and Latino voters moved back toward Democrats. Several Republicans tied the losses to Miller directly. Rep. Don Bacon, who is leaving Congress, called the pick “not a good choice” and said Miller “cost us seats in Texas and Arizona.” Rep. Marlin Stutzman called it “a horrible decision.” Democratic leaders were blunter. Hakeem Jeffries called Miller “a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist,” and Chuck Schumer said Trump “couldn’t have made a worse choice.”

Supporters see it differently. In exit polling reported by Newsweek, Republicans still held a narrow edge on which party voters trust to handle immigration, 44 percent to 41 percent. The economy was the top issue for 39 percent of voters, and immigration for only about 14 percent. On that reading, voters punished the party in power mostly over other issues, not over immigration. Vice President JD Vance called Miller “an amazing patriot,” Pete Hegseth called him “a true patriot and America First fighter,” and Brent Scher, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, called him “a wartime chief of staff.” A person close to the White House told Semafor the pick “sends the right message to the base.”

Both readings have something to them. Immigration clearly mattered, but it wasn’t the only thing voters were deciding, and I’d be wary of anyone who claims it explains the whole result.

What this means if you have a case

These are general points, not advice for any particular situation.

  • File early and completely. If you qualify for something now, assume the rules may tighten before you file. Keep copies of everything you submit and proof that you filed it, and track every deadline and the expiration date of your current status.
  • Stalled cases have options. When an application sits far beyond normal processing times, a federal lawsuit, such as a mandamus or Administrative Procedure Act action, is sometimes worth discussing. It isn’t right for every case, and it should be weighed case by case.
  • Nationals of the 39 travel-ban countries. Be especially careful about international travel while anything is pending, and get advice before you leave the United States.
  • Employers. Review your H-1B and PERM strategy now, with the fee litigation and the company-level PERM suspensions in mind, and pay particular attention to employees approaching the six-year H-1B limit.

Where this leaves us

The president still makes the decisions. As of Monday, the person shaping how they reach him is the person who designed most of the immigration agenda now in place. Congress will look much harder at how that agenda is carried out, and the courts will keep deciding which parts of it hold up. For anyone with a case in the system, the practical lesson is simple: prepare under today’s rules, document everything, and don’t count on Washington to fix things for you.

Sources

This article is a personal commentary on U.S. immigration policy. It reflects my own views and does not represent the position of any firm, organization, or client. It is general information rather than legal advice, it is not directed at any particular person’s circumstances, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Immigration law and policy change frequently and individual outcomes depend on specific facts. Jordan Gonzalez is licensed in the State of Texas and practices U.S. immigration law; he is not admitted to practice in Spain.