CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro

Interview

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BLITZER: Nick Valencia, thank you very much.

Joining us now, Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas. He is a Democrat who serves on the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees.

Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

We are going to discuss the latest on family separations in just a moment. But I want to get your reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the president's travel ban. What did you make of the ruling today?

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D), TEXAS: I think it was a shameful decision.

I think that the Supreme Court had a chance to stand up to the president's religious discrimination and instead affirmed it. And I think it will be looked upon in history as a very shameful decision and that, years from now, the Congress and the American people will look back on it with regret. BLITZER: But this is the third version, not the original version.

It's a much narrower version than the first two. There are a lot more exceptions. Does that count for anything from your perspective?

CASTRO: There's still heavy bans on about -- people from about five countries.

And, Wolf, as I looked at it as it was being developed, and even as the decision was announced today, I couldn't help but think that this is the closest that we have come to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which kept Chinese from coming to this country for about 60 years until in the early 1940s the Congress had to pass a law to overturn that.

This in a sense is Donald Trump's Chinese Exclusion Act.

BLITZER: But five of the seven countries on the current travel ban, which the Supreme Court ruled today is constitutional, are Muslim majority. But so many other Muslim countries, whether Indonesia or Saudi Arabia or Egypt, with hundreds of millions of Muslims, they are not included. Does that say anything to you?

CASTRO: Well, what it says is that it's not a total ban of all Muslims across the world.

But he certainly was selecting a group of countries that are predominantly Muslim countries. And as we know, based on what he said on the campaign trail and even as president of the United States, he has been targeting Muslims. I don't think there's much debate about that.

BLITZER: But they argue that these five Muslim majority countries have a history of terrorism, some of them are state sponsors of terrorism. They can't provide the information that U.S. customs need to admit their citizens, whether Syria, Libya, Yemen Somalia or Iran.

Does that mean anything to you?

CASTRO: Oh, absolutely.

We should always take terrorism seriously and do everything that we can to prevent it and to prevent bad folks from coming into this country.

But, Wolf, that makes us a very small fraction of the people who are part of these nations. And that's what we can't let the president get away with, the same thing that he does to Hispanics in the country by trying to use MS-13 gang members and basically demonize the entire Hispanic community and Hispanic immigrants by holding up the worst among them as the norm.

And the fact is, they aren't.

BLITZER: I spoke to the White House principal deputy press secretary, Raj Shah, last hour. And he pointed out that these countries can get themselves off the list by meeting the standards set by the Justice Department, the State Department, the Trump administration. Do you buy that?

CASTRO: Well, I mean, again, that's a very subjective thing. And it's a determination that's going to be made by the president or by his underlings.

And because it's so subjective, I doubt that they are going to be able to get themselves off that list, or that he wants them off that list.

BLITZER: The humanitarian situation in many of these countries, especially Syria for example, maybe half-a-million people have been killed in the civil war over past several years, is certainly dire.

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Are you planning on taking action to make sure that the most vulnerable people in these countries can still get waivers to enter the United States as refugees?

CASTRO: Of course.

The decision just came down today. But of course we're going to make a push for that. And also, Wolf, I think it's notable, the United States gives a lot of money to help refugees. But compared to other countries, we also don't -- again, comparatively speaking, we don't take in as many refugees as other nations.

Yet we ask many nations to take in refugees from places like Syria and other war-torn countries. So, we have to be willing to step up and do the same and offer a refuge to people who are in nations that are torn by civil war and violence, people in Central America that are being threatened, deadly threats from violent drug gangs, many of whom are profiting by the sale of drugs in the United States.

We need to step up and be a nation, as we have been for decades, for generations, that's willing to take these folks.

BLITZER: Let's turn to the issue of family separations, what's ongoing here in the United States.

Do you trust these federal agencies to make sure that every child is returned to his or her parent, or do you want Congress to play more of a role in oversight of all of this?

CASTRO: Congress needs to play a big role in making sure that HHS and the other federal agencies provide us a full list that accounts for every child and every parent that were separated, so that we can audit that list and account for every single person on that list and make sure that they are reunified.

And they need to submit this to Congress, under penalty of perjury, the department, the head of the department, the Cabinet secretary, because even 3if you miss one or two people on that list, those are kids that were basically permanently separated from their parents because of actions of this president and the United States government.

And that's not something that should be happening in the year 2018.

BLITZER: The question of what the president calls his zero tolerance policy, meaning that anyone caught coming into the United States illegally is going to be arrested, there's some question about whether that's in place, not in place.

Customs and Border Protection says it has temporarily stopped referring parents for criminal prosecution. Does that mean, from your perspective right now -- and you're a Texas congressman -- that it's back to what they used to call and release for families caught crossing the border during the Obama administration?

CASTRO: Well, it sounds like they're going to do what other Democratic and Republican administrations have done, which is use prosecutorial discretion not to prosecute these folks, many of whom are actually asylum seekers.

And what's interesting is that this administration basically threw everybody in together and started separating out parents and children. So, you are right. The policy right now is very vague and unclear.

And, quite honestly, Congress is even having problems verifying what's going on, on the ground.

BLITZER: Will that change, Congressman, when the federal government has more facilities to hold families together if it can change what is called the Flores agreement to hold families longer than 20 days?

As you know, the Pentagon is in your state of Texas working on getting two military bases ready to hold thousands of parents and their children.

CASTRO: Right.

Well, what we should have is allow everybody for due -- everybody to have due process. That's why it was very alarming yesterday to hear the president say that he basically wanted to do away with due process for folks, and then Sarah Sanders say, I think at the White House briefing, that somebody can have due process without seeing a judge.

That is a remarkable level of ignorance coming from a White House official. Anybody that has ever practiced law or been involved in a lawsuit in any way at all, any capacity knows that the ability to present yourself before a judge and be heard by a judge is essential for due process.

BLITZER: Congressman Castro, thanks for joining us.

CASTRO: Thank you.

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