Who is Stephen Miller, Donald Trump's powerful right hand and immigration policy architect

By Emily Clark, ABC News

Photo: AFP

When Stephen Miller was in high school, his classmates made a short film about him and called it Strange Times at Samohi.

At Santa Monica High - or Samohi, as it is known - Miller stood out as an outspoken teenager, who forced his conservative views on his ardently liberal classmates.

He would go on to be Donald Trump's hype man at campaign rallies, his speechwriter, and eventually the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security.

He is the architect of the Trump administration's hardline approach to immigration, but before he cracked Washington, Miller ran for student council.

Part of a pitch he made to his classmates was featured in the amateur documentary they made about him.

"I will say and I will do things that no-one else in their right mind would say or do," Miller said, riling up the crowd before him.

In this very early campaign, the platform he ran on was that students should not be required to pick up rubbish, because "janitors are paid to do it for us".

Photo: Supplied

Miller knew he was different, but that only made him louder. Opinionated and forthright, the young firebrand borrowed a quote from Theodore Roosevelt for his high school yearbook.

"There can be no 50-50 Americanism in this country," he wrote. "There is room here for only 100 percent Americanism, only for those who are American and nothing else."

Miller waged war on what he considered to be "political correctness out of control" at his school. He thought it was a problem that the school communicated in Spanish to its large Latino cohort, and for him, the staff and students weren't patriotic enough.

After the 11 September terrorist attacks, Miller challenged the school administration, accusing it of breaching the state code that required each public school to perform "appropriate patriotic exercises each day". He said it took months of campaigning, but the school did bring back the Pledge of Allegiance.

"Stephen made it his business at the school to be heard and be known," a former classmate told NPR years later. "He was outspoken and a provocateur in every sense of the word."

The teenager even authored a now-famous letter to the editor at his local newspaper, where he blasted his teachers, saying they would "denounce the US as wickedly imperialistic" and "insult and demean the president".

In the final line, he did what so many political operators do and launched a call to action.

"If you feel, like me, that political correctness has crossed the line, call the school or the district.