Trump Is Planning to Expand Travel Ban, Says Stephen Miller

President Donald Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller has said the administration will seek to expand the controversial travel ban if the president is elected to a second term.

Miller gave a phone interview to NCB News on Thursday and outlined plans for immigration policy over the next four years if Trump wins on November 3. He stressed that he was speaking as part of the Trump campaign, and not in his capacity as a White House adviser.

The travel ban is a series of executive actions restricting travel into the U.S. from several countries, many of them with Muslim majority populations. Miller said the administration's aim would be "raising and enhancing the standard for entry" to the U.S.

He told NBC News that one priority would be "building on and expanding the framework that we've created with the travel ban, in terms of raising the standard for screening and vetting for admission to the United States."

This expansion could include enhanced screening methods, changes to the interview process, more information sharing among government agencies and vetting the "ideological sympathies or leanings" of those applying for visas.

"That's going to be a major priority," Miller said. "It's going to require a whole government effort. It's going to require building a very elaborate and very complex screening mechanism."

Miller also laid out other priorities for a second Trump term. These include keeping down the number of people given asylum in the U.S., moving to a points-based system for work visas and cracking down on sanctuary cities.

Reducing asylum grants would involve expanding "burden-sharing" deals with other countries, which are aimed at creating safe third-partner countries to prevent asylum seekers reaching the U.S.

"The president would like to expand that to include the rest of the world," Miller told NBC News. "And so if you create safe third partners in other continents and other countries and regions, then you have the ability to share the burden of asylum-seekers on a global basis."

Some of the second term immigration objectives would require legislation, but Miller explained that the administration could take action directly, as it has in the past.

"In many cases, fixing these problems and restoring some semblance of sanity to our immigration programs does involve regulatory reform," he said. "Congress has delegated a lot of authority. [...] And that underscores the depth of the choice facing the American people."