John Zadrozny
John Zadrozny served in numerous roles in the Trump administration as a proxy for Trump adviser Stephen Miller, most notably as Chief of Staff of US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS). Zadrozny was also Deputy Director of Oversight and Investigations of America First Legal Foundation, a Project 2025 Advisory Board member and litigation group founded by Miller in 2021 to engage in “lawfare designed to defeat the ever-pervasive woke agenda infiltrating Big Business, Big Education, and Big Government.” Zadrozny was included on Miller’s list of lawyers he believes have the “spine” to carry-out commands by Donald Trump, if he were to become president again. Documents obtained via FOIA requests filed by American Oversight showed Miller in regular communication with his proxies, including Zadrozny, whom he communicated with on refugees, the border wall, and DACA. Zadrozny contributed to the Department of State chapter in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership.
Zadrozny joined the Trump administration in 2017, starting in the White House Domestic Policy Council as Special Assistant for justice and homeland security. In 2018, Zadrozny moved over to Policy Planning in the State Department, where he was involved in changes to deny visas to people asserted to be at risk of becoming a “public charge.” He helped tout the release of data showing the Department was denying more visas on public charge grounds. These changes were later found to be illegal in a lawsuit brought by the City of Baltimore with Democracy Forward, which summarized that “the administration quietly–and unlawfully–amended the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual to consider whether visa applicants or their family members, including their U.S. citizen family members, have received non-cash benefits, including essential public programs like free school lunches, public health vaccinations, and Head Start.”
In 2019, Zadrozny transferred to DHS, where he was promoted from Deputy to Acting Chief of Staff at US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) under the Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli, whose appointment was deemed unlawful by a federal court. FAIR called Zadrozny “a firm believer in the administration’s agenda.” Representing USCIS in a cross-department meeting, Zadrozny and another Miller proxy, Andrew Veprek, reportedly argued for setting the next year’s cap on refugee admissions at zero, as Stephen Miller urged, or 3,000 to 10,000 at most. This came after the Trump administration had already cut refugee admissions by a third in 2019, to 30,000; the administration ultimately cut the 2020 cap down to just 18,000 refugees, but admitted only 11,840, despite concerns from Pentagon officials on the effect of such low caps on resettling Iraqis and others who had aided U.S. troops.
Since the end of Trump’s term, Zadrozny has worked for the right-wing nonprofits America First Policy Institute (AFPI), led by former acting director of the Domestic Policy Council under Trump, Brooke Rollins. Zadrozny was the Director of AFPI’s Center for Homeland Security and Immigration, a role now held by fellow Trump USCIS alum Robert Law. He also was Deputy Director of Oversight and Investigations for America First Legal (AFL), led by Stephen Miller.
Zadrozny was also a board member of the pro-Trump dark money group Citizens for Sanity in 2022 alongside fellow former Trump officials Gene Hamilton and Ian Prior, which was founded that year and immediately raised over $94 million. According to tax filings, the group is a related tax-exempt entity to the Conservative Partnership Institute, America First Legal, Center for Renewing America, and American Accountability Foundation. While Zadrozny was with the group, it ran racist anti-immigration ads that sought to stoke fears of undocumented immigrants “draining your paychecks, wrecking your schools, ruining your hospitals, threatening your family” and claimed “Mixed among the masses are drug dealers, sex traffickers and violent predators.”
Prior to joining the Trump administration, Zadrozny was counsel on Capitol Hill for Sen. Ted Cruz (2015-2017), Sen. Bob Corker on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (2013-2015), and Chairman Darrell Issa on the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee (2011-2013). He previously worked in the Bush administration as a policy analyst in the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy and as Deputy Director of the State Department’s liaison office.
Zadrozny was also a legislative counsel for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in 2009, an anti-immigrant SPLC-designated hate group that has close ties to white supremacist groups. Numerous former FAIR employees were hired by the Trump administration. The SPLC has described FAIR as “a group with one mission: to severely limit immigration into the United States” whose “veneer hides much ugliness.”