Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro (D) sharply criticized incoming “border czar” Tom Homan during a Friday appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe," saying a "heart of cruelty" is behind President-elect Trump's strident immigration policies.
Homan, who has encouraged undocumented immigrants to "self-deport" out of the U.S., said this week that family detention centers will be necessary to carry out Trump's mass deportation plans, with halfway houses needed for children who are U.S. citizens.
“They’re not picking up and leaving and moving somewhere thousands of miles away just on a whim,” Castro said Friday.
“So for Tom Homan to say that, I think just — it just shows you, again, the heart of cruelty, the dark heart that he and the Trump administration folks have for these migrants. They like to dehumanize them.”
Trump has pledged the largest mass deportation in history after he takes office next month, threatening to go after both immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally and, in some cases, legally. He's tapped Homan, a career immigration enforcer, to help implement and oversee his sweeping plans.
In multiple interviews this week, Homan said it's up to the undocumented parents of U.S.-born children whether their families stay together after they made the decision to have kids despite their immigration status.
“And the way that he [Homan] speaks there is also very clinical and bureaucratic, disconnected from the real life of these people, of these human beings," Castro said. "So I think that what we are in for is we’re in for cruelty part two in this administration."
