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Miller Gaggles with Reporters Outside the White House, Aug. 29, 2025: Why Enforcement Prioritizes Sanctuary Cities

August 29, 2025 · Roll Call Factbase Videos · 0:19:20

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What happened

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller took reporters’ questions outside the White House on August 29, 2025, in Roll Call Factbase Videos’ recording, as reporting pointed to expanded immigration operations in Chicago and Boston. Miller laid out the foundation: ICE “is a federal agency with a federal mission that operates 24/7 from coast to coast and border to border,” and the highest public-safety concern sits in sanctuary jurisdictions, which the administration would prioritize, as he stated the policy.

He defined the term as ICE uses it: a sanctuary city is one where an illegal alien charged or convicted of a crime is not turned over to ICE on a detainer, but released “at time and place unknown,” forcing agents to search for weeks or months — while in cooperating jurisdictions the same person is transferred directly from local custody. Miller also defended proposed visa term limits for students and foreign journalists as a program-integrity measure against status abuse, and closed by saying the President stands ready to use federal law enforcement and the National Guard to help any community that wishes to be, in his words, liberated from criminal elements.

Why it matters

This is Miller’s fullest public explanation of the sanctuary-city enforcement doctrine — the detainer contrast at its center became the administration’s standard argument for the Chicago, Boston and Washington operations that followed in the autumn of 2025.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Miller’s August 29, 2025 statement that enforcement would prioritize sanctuary jurisdictions as a matter of public safety and national security — flagged for the scoreboard editors; the entry itself remains review-gated.

Sources: Roll Call Factbase Videos, “Stephen Miller Speaks to Reporters Outside the White House — August 29, 2025” (video bKbpg6Br7f0); transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, never republished verbatim). Alternate carry of the same gaggle recorded in the index: Next Gen Politics (8zGvMUoAVbw).