This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Gabe Ortíz: I wanted to ask you about this public health crisis, this pandemic, that we’re facing right now. I know Elizabeth Warren ... she’s come up with something like three or four plans already to deal with this. But I wanted to ask you what you would be doing in terms of a response to this crisis compared to what we’re seeing play out right now.

Julián Castro: What I found when we dealt with natural disasters at HUD was that you had to do at least three things very well, whether you’re talking about a local community or the country. You had to be well prepared, you had to be coordinated, and you had to make adjustments. The United States under this administration was not prepared for this pandemic, and that’s become more and more obvious as the weeks have gone on, unfortunately. And that’s meant more loss of life, more economic hardship, and a worse quality of life for so many people in this country.

The coordination isn’t there right now between the federal government, state government, and even some local governments, although many local mayors and governors across the country have done a tremendous job picking up the slack for the federal government. And only now are adjustments—some of the adjustments that need to be made—are actually being made. When I think about what we should be doing, I think about it in that way. What would I be doing?

Number one, we need to be giving all of the resources to local communities, state governments, nonprofits, and individuals who need a stable place to live, need good access to health care, including testing, which is not as widespread as it needs to be right now. We need to make sure that the most vulnerable populations in our country, whether we’re talking about prisoners, or homeless individuals, or farmworkers, who are essential workers on the front line, are well taken care of right now. So there’s a resource gap.

Just as importantly as doing a good job now is being better prepared for the next time, if there is a next time. Right now, we’re being told that this could have a second wave that rushes up on us in the fall or next year; it could happen 10 years from now, we don’t know. But we need to learn lessons from this experience, and we can’t go back to the old normal. My hope is that this is an inflection point to break out of the Reagan-era belief that smaller, weaker government is good. We need a robust, active federal government to partner with local communities and states to ensure that we’re never as vulnerable as we have been this time. We need a mind shift, and a political shift.

Ortiz: You just touched right now on vulnerable communities ... I know there’s a lot of advocates right now that are really concerned about undocumented families, they’re concerned about mixed status families. Look at the federal relief package: It excludes stimulus checks for a lot of these families. Look at ICE: We’re having such a hard time trying to get even the most medically vulnerable people released from detention during this. What should we be doing to protect these families?

Castro: We should be treating every single person and family in this country, regardless of their immigration status, with dignity, respect, and compassion. They should be included in these relief packages. They should be able to access public health, access education, access housing opportunity, during this crisis—and beyond. I mean, during the campaign, several of us argued that it makes sense for this country to ensure that every person, no matter who you are, gets good health care, gets good housing opportunities, gets good educational opportunities. It will make us stronger as a country. I’m confident that more Americans have seen the value of that idea during this crisis.

Ortíz: You talked a lot during your own campaign about making immigration courts independent. Right now, even the Supreme Court … is not doing proceedings in person, and yet the [Department of Justice] is adamantly refusing to do a similar shutdown of immigration courts. Why do you think that the administration is being so resistant on this?

Castro: This administration has an anti-immigrant agenda. This president is determined to drive out as many immigrants from this country as possible, and if that means keeping the machinery in place, this judicial system stacked against—which is already stacked against asylum-seekers and undocumented immigrants—if that means keeping it going during this pandemic, this administration is going to keep going. That’s what I believe is happening.

I’m convinced that we’re going to have an opportunity in 2021 to reform how Homeland Security and our immigration courts are proceeding, in addition to changing our immigration laws. Many of the things that I laid out in the campaign should be done: independent immigration courts, breaking up ICE and doing enforcement differently, stop this unnecessary detention of people, and instead do something like that Family Case Management Program, which came at the end of Obama administration, and had more than 98% success rate of people showing up for their court hearing. There’s a much better way to do all of this, but as you know, what gives this … sudden urgency is that more than 80 people in ICE detention facilities have contracted the coronavirus, including detention workers—guards. So these things are powder kegs for this virus, and it doesn’t benefit anybody—it certainly doesn’t benefit those individuals, it doesn’t benefit the people that work at those facilities, it doesn’t benefit our country for these things to be hotbeds of this virus. This is another powerful reason, a reminder of why we need to get rid of these things and treat people differently.

Ortíz: Touching on changes that we can make in November, I know a lot of people really miss your [presidential] campaign because you were talking about things that either were kind of brushed over, or just ignored entirely. Do you see yourself getting heavily involved in this general election coming up?

Castro: I’m gonna to do everything that I can to make sure we defeat Donald Trump in November—and I’m also excited to help young progressive candidates across the country get elected, at the local level, the state level, the federal level. I’ll do whatever I can to use my voice in a positive way so that the vision that we articulated in the campaign of an America where everyone counts actually comes to pass in this country.

Ortíz: I think a lot of folks are really anxious right now just because it seems like nobody really is in control when it comes to the federal level—it kind of feels like there’s nobody guiding the ship. What’s your message to folks who are really anxious right now?

Castro: That there’s strong leadership to be found in governor’s offices, in the mayor’s office. That there’s a community spirit out there that should lift us right now. There is this greater sense right now that we’re all in this together, and people’s willingness to help one another out. People’s recognition that we are, in some ways, more interdependent than we ever have been. Today, our safety depends on other people’s social distancing as well, and it makes you realize how connected all of us are. So for people that are feeling anxious, I would say that there is strong leadership in many places, even though we haven’t seen that out of the Oval Office, and there’s a community spirit out there, and a support for one another that I hope is finding them as well.