Julián Castro on Trump immigration rule: He ‘just wants a nation in his own image’

Presidential candidate and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro on Thursday said that President Trump issued a new rule to make it easier to reject immigrants because he is seeking to create “a nation in his own image.”

“The real agenda” behind the new proposed rule “is that Donald Trump just wants a nation in his own image,” Castro said in an appearance on CNN’s “New Day.”

{mosads}“He wants to keep certain people out, only let certain people in, and this is not the spirit that we should move forward with,” Castro added.

“The real agenda behind it is that Donald Trump just wants a nation in his own image,” Julián Castro says about the Trump administration’s new rule that could cut limit legal immigration https://t.co/fuQp5pvU1y pic.twitter.com/vDhb8P3ICS

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 15, 2019

The rule would expand the kinds of public aid that legal immigrants could be considered a “public charge” for receiving, which could hinder them from obtaining a green card.

Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli has defended the rule, offering a revision to Emma Lazarus’s poem on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty to say “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”

“Let’s be clear about what that policy change is; it relates to people who are legal immigrants here … it matters because they’re legal immigrants and they’re paying taxes to this country, they’re working hard,” Castro said Thursday.

Castro also addressed his purchase of ads on “Fox & Friends,” Trump’s favorite morning show, in which he blames Trump’s rhetoric for the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that killed 22 people. The suspected gunman has been tied to a racist manifesto that decries a Hispanic “invasion,” echoing terminology the president has frequently used.

“I wanted to deliver a message to the president to understand that he has poisoned the well for many people and inspired racists like that shooter in El Paso to take deadly action against Americans,” Castro said.