‘Heart of cruelty’: Trump border chief condemned over migrant policy

Julián Castro, the former US housing secretary, has accused Donald Trump’s incoming border enforcement chief of ushering in “cruelty part two” towards migrants arriving in America under the president-elect’s planned border policies.

Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Castro sharply criticised Tom Homan, Trump’s newly appointed “border czar”, over his comments about family detention centers and the separation of migrant families.

“It just shows you, again, the heart of cruelty, the dark heart that he and the Trump administration folks have for these migrants,” Castro said on Friday. “They like to dehumanize them.”

Homan, who previously served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, recently outlined plans that could see the return of family detention centres – a practice ended under the Biden administration. He suggested undocumented parents of US-born children would need to make their own decisions about keeping families together.

Castro, a Democrat, argued instead that migrants often flee desperate conditions including violence and hunger.

“They’re not picking up and leaving and moving somewhere thousands of miles away just on a whim,” he said.

Castro took issue with Homan’s “clinical and bureaucratic” approach to immigration enforcement, describing it as “disconnected from the real life of these people, of these human beings”.

While Homan has indicated that any new detention facilities would be “open-air campus” settings with childcare and education provisions, he has also repeated the incoming administration’s commitment to ending “catch-and-release” policies for all migrants, including families.