Miller is one of the most powerful officials in Trump’s White House, illustrating how it has sought to overcome a ‘deep state’ of professional diplomats

The historic shifts in US immigration under Donald Trump have been dictated by a relentless voice over a telephone line: Stephen Miller, the president’s immigration czar, who in recent months has turned the state department’s visa and refugee operations into what some current and former diplomats have described as a personal fiefdom.

Each morning, usually at 10am, a small circle of conservative diplomats allied with Miller, including those who have assumed control of the state department’s consular and refugee operations, dial in for what some have termed the “Stephen Miller call”, an interagency discussion of immigration measures led by Miller, the White House’s homeland security adviser.

In the calls, Miller is said to drill the diplomats on visa and immigration issues – pressing officials to hasten negotiations with third countries to accept deportees who can not or should not be sent back to their countries of origin, and lobbying for individual visa revocations for critics of Israel’s war in Gaza or of Charlie Kirk, the conservative pundit who was assassinated in September.