From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. President Trump, we all know, sees immigration as one of his winning issues. He's more than willing to make extreme threats like closing the border entirely if it makes him look tough.

One reason the issue works so well for him is that the Democrats tend to avoid it entirely.

There really isn't a coherent view of immigration in the Democratic Party.

And most candidates in the race now barely bring it up, except to object to what Trump does.

But at least one Democratic candidate is eager to talk about immigration.

Julian Castro served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration.

But he also is former mayor of San Antonio in Texas, right near the border.

And he wants to change the terms of the presidential debate entirely

castro has suggested that entering the united states without papers

should no longer be a federal crime

i spoke to Julian Castro last week

and i asked him why he thought focusing on immigration policy

was precisely the way to be Donald Trump.

There are different reasons that I've chosen to focus early on and rolled out as my first policy plan on immigration.

Number one, that's close to my heart.

You know, my family story is an American,

an immigrant's American dream story. I grew up with a grandmother that had come over from Mexico

when she was seven. She worked as a maid, a cook, and a babysitter, raised my mom as a single

parent. My mom became the first one to graduate from high school, go on to college.

My brother, Joaquin, and I were able to go to college, to law school, to become the first in our family to become professionals as lawyers.

And you're the son of real activists, a political activist.

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