When redistricting took a primarily West Side district to one that encompasses nearly all of downtown San Antonio, the 20th Congressional District turned bluer than ever, effectively curbing any Republican challenger’s bid for the seat. 

That doesn’t mean U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) has been sitting this election out.

Instead, Castro is standing outside the gates of immigration detention centers in South Texas, drawing national attention to the issue of detained children and families and criticizing the Trump administration for brutality.

He’s also working to help Democrats statewide and nationally take control of Congress during the upcoming midterm elections, he said.

Castro’s opponent on the ballot is Edgardo Báez, a U.S. Army veteran, retired medical professional and lawyer whose campaign looks to pick up the voters shifted in during redistricting.

While Castro’s office may not be up for easy grabs, it’s clear from the recent San Antonio rally in San Antonio headlined by President Donald Trump that the state of Texas is, Castro said.

“Polling has made consistently clear that our candidates for senator and governor are on the cusp of winning for the first time in a generation, and that’s because the people of Texas are fed up with this out-of-control Republican leadership in our state,” Castro said in an interview with the Report ahead of early voting, which kicks off Monday. 

Texans are “fed up” with the war in Iran, tariffs and what he calls a mass deportation campaign, issues that when combined are making it hard for consumers to make ends meet and for businesses to keep their doors open, he said. 

Texas is within striking distance of turning blue this cycle, Castro said — and campaigning to try to make it happen is an opportunity he can’t ignore.

Native son

Born in 1974, Castro grew up on San Antonio’s West Side and attended public schools with his identical twin brother, former three-term mayor and District 7 Councilman Julián Castro.

Their mother, Rosie Castro, is first-generation Mexican American, a longtime American civil rights activist and educator and former interim District 7 council member. Their father, Jessie Guzman, is a retired mathematics teacher in the Edgewood Independent School District.

Castro attended Stanford University in California and earned a law degree from Harvard University.

In 2002, when he was 28, Castro ran for Texas’ 125th House district seat, and in the Democratic primary, defeated incumbent Arthur Reyna. In the general election, he defeated Republic nominee Nelson Balido.

Castro is an attorney who has represented Texas’ 20th Congressional District since 2013. He serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

On Thursday evening, Castro is attending a District 1 town hall with Texas congressmen Rep. Diego Bernal and Sen. José Menéndez (San Antonio), and City Councilwoman Sukh Kaur.

Kaur said Castro works for all residents in the community on issues big and small, including, recently, the quiet zones in areas of the city where the railroad passes and also bringing an American family back from India after their travel was blocked.

“He’s been an amazing leader truly in the immigration conversation and ensuring that all of the residents in our community feel safe,” she said.

“I got into public service because I fundamentally believe that one of the main roles of people in government is to help create an ‘infrastructure of opportunity’ for the people they represent,” Castro said.

“In addition to the issues that we’re dealing with very intensely at any given time, I always come back to working on building that infrastructure of opportunity for folks,” he said.

Castro served as campaign chair for his brother during Julián Castro’s failed 2020 presidential bid.

In recent years, while holding down his day job in Congress, Castro has also coped with surgery and treatments following a 2022 diagnosis of neuroendocrine cancer. He said that remaining tumors in his liver have not grown, evidence that his monthly treatment at the Mays Cancer Center in San Antonio is working. 

The experience has been a reminder of why he fights for universal health care, he said. 

Detention centers

Since last year, Castro has made nine visits to the South Texas Family Residential Center in the town of Dilley since the Trump administration reopened the facility. 

He’s been to ICE facilities in the South Texas cities of Karnes, Pearsall and Laredo multiple times, and to an Office of Refugee Resettlement camp in San Benito.

There, he’s met with detained immigrants, pointed to inhumane conditions and called for the “trailer prisons” to be shut down. 

“Congressman Castro has been on the front lines of this administration’s attacks on immigrant communities and is dedicated to ensuring everyone knows what’s happening to kids in detention,” said Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project Action Fund and a supporter. “It’s an honor to stand next to him in so many of our fights for civil rights.”

Castro has worked for detainees to be released in high-profile immigration cases, like Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old Minneapolis boy detained in January while wearing a bunny hat and a Spiderman backpack, and later, teenage mariachi-performing brothers from McAllen who had once performed at the White House.

“The people of my district have asked for help,” he said. “I literally get outreach every single day on different platforms … from people asking for help because this mass deportation campaign has devastated so many families in San Antonio and South Texas, and also it’s devastated many businesses.”

When Trump announced he would headline a recent rally in San Antonio, Castro invited the president to visit Dilley “to see the lifelong lasting trauma he’s caused to these kids, to see what he’s doing in the name of Americans.”

Castro said it did not surprise him that the president did not accept. 

“These decisions that have been so ugly and so cruel have been made from Washington, D.C., by many people who have never visited the border, never visited South Texas, and are completely unfamiliar with our communities,” he said.

The brothers spent their recent 52nd birthday block-walking and writing get-out-the-vote postcards with the Bexar Democrats at the St. Paul Community Center. 

Castro has also been a frequent speaker on the campaign trail supporting other Democratic candidates, including lieutenant governor nominee Vikki Goodwin and gubernatorial hopeful Gina Hinojosa.

“This mass deportation campaign in Texas is as much [Gov.] Greg Abbott’s as it is Donald Trump’s,” he said during a panel at the recent Texas Tribune Festival.

‘On a new course’

If his party flips the chamber this November and takes control of the House, Castro said he wants to see a special commission investigate ICE, including deaths in custody and at the hands of agents, and to pursue legislation overhauling the agency.

For now, Castro and the Democrats are in defensive mode. 

“But the longer-term goal is to get Congress to do its job of passing immigration reform,” he said, which it came close to doing in 2013. “I feel like that we could have avoided a lot of the ugliness that has come in American politics if the Congress had just passed that bill back then.”

He said he believes the election in November is going to set the nation “on a new course.”

In the meantime, Castro is working on American foreign policy and, if Democrats take control of the House, would chair the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere in the Foreign Affairs Committee. 

That subcommittee oversees U.S. relations with Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba and other countries. 

“This president, more than any in generations, has focused a real spotlight on Latin America,” he said. “I disagree with many of the policies that the administration has pursued, but there’s no question that there is a renewed spotlight and interest in our relationship with Latin America.”

Castro is proud of his San Antonio roots and that he represents the city in Washington. “I think every day about how I could help make the lives of San Antonians better,” he said.