Joaquin Castro
Democrat · TX-20 · U.S. House
Bio
Joaquin Castro is an American lawyer and Democratic politician who has represented Texas's 20th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives since 2013. The district includes just over half of his native San Antonio. He currently serves on the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Full bio on Wikipedia →Record of service
- In office
- 13.6 years
- First took office
- 2013 (7 terms)
- Seniority
- 116 of 437 by time served
- Age
- 51
- San Antonio, TX · 210-348-8216
Service history, offices and identifiers from unitedstates/congress-legislators (public domain). Years served sum each term rather than subtracting the first start date, so a break in service is not counted as time in office.
Overall lean (DW-NOMINATE)
Issue profile
Each issue runs left ↔ right, scored from how the member voted on bills tagged to that issue (−1…+1). Issues with too few votes are blank. Overall lean uses DW-NOMINATE.
How they score against the parties
Joaquin Castro's voting record compared with each party's national platform, issue by issue — the same similarity score used across the site.
On the political map
Joaquin Castro (the large ringed dot) among every current member of Congress and the party platforms.
Each small dot is a current member (Dem · Rep); the larger dots are party platforms — click one for its closest members. Economic axis: taxes, healthcare, labor, energy. Social axis: abortion, guns, immigration, civil rights, crime.
Do you vote like Castro?
Answer a few questions on the issues and see which members of Congress — and which party — actually line up with you.
Caucuses & committees
Where Castrosits in Congress's own organization — each group's lean is computed from its members' voting records. Explore them all on the caucuses and committees pages.
Caucuses
- Congressional Progressive Caucusstrongly left · 93 members
- New Democrat Coalitionstrongly left · 109 members
- Congressional Hispanic Caucusstrongly left · 40 members
- Congressional Equality Caucusstrongly left · 153 members
Most and least aligned members
Treating Castro's 14 issue scores as a vector, cosine similarity measures whether two voting records point the same way (+100%) or in opposite directions (−100%) — the colleagues whose records align most and least with theirs.
Recent notable votes
Latest news
Democrat Texas Reps Urge Cities to Separate Ties with ICETwo prominent Texas Democrats, Congressmen Joaquin Castro (D-TX) and Greg Casar (D-TX), urged six Bexar County cities to end their 287(g) agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The agreements, required for all county jails under Texas…
Breitbart News · August 19, 2026
ICE Is Building a Massive DNA DatabaseThe Department of Homeland Security has drastically ramped up efforts to add DNA from nearly one million immigrants to a massive criminal database. Most of them have no criminal history; some of them are kids. In 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement adde…
The New Republic · August 3, 2026
'Bigotry' as Government Policy: Trump Orders ICE to Ramp Up Arrests of HaitiansMass arrests of Haitian immigrants by federal agents could begin as early as this week, according to federal documents regarding President Donald Trump's new directive to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the right-wing majority on the Supreme …
Common Dreams · July 27, 2026
Rep. Castro Urges Oversight of Erik Prince’s ‘Drone War’ in Haiti as Trump Pentagon Pushes for Closer TiesA Democratic congressman said he is ramping up oversight as the Trump administration plans to strengthen its ties to a private military contractor in Haiti run by the president's close ally Erik Prince, which has conducted drone strikes that have killed dozen…
Common Dreams · July 22, 2026
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