Donald Trump has never bothered to distinguish between migrant children and their parents when it comes to his anti-immigrant fear-mongering. “They look so innocent,” the president said of migrant kids last year. “They’re not innocent.” Such comments would seem to be in a class of their own in terms of their heartlessness, but as it turns out, he was able to find someone with whom he sees eye-to-eye: his nominee to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In January comments to Fox News that resurfaced this week, Mark Morgan, Trump’s pick to lead the border-security agency, not only bolstered the fear that undocumented immigrants might be MS-13 members, but suggested that he’s somehow capable of discerning which young migrants will join the brutal gang. “I’ve been to detention facilities where I’ve walked up to these individuals that are so-called minors, 17 or under,” Morgan told Tucker Carlson. “I’ve looked at them—and I’ve looked at their eyes, Tucker—and I’ve said, ‘That is a soon-to-be MS-13 gang member.’”

MS-13, of course, is a real problem—the gang does, indeed, target vulnerable young people for recruitment. But Trump and his allies have elevated the gang to the status of anti-immigrant boogeyman, using sweeping generalizations to spook the base into turning on anyone seeking to cross the border. And Morgan’s suggestion that he’s got some kind of internal radar for future MS-13 members is plainly absurd. Which is to say, he should fit right in with an administration that has sought to ramp up its hardline immigration agenda, including with a possible plan to conduct mass arrests of undocumented immigrants that the president teased on Friday. “All people that are illegally coming into the United States now will be removed from our Country at a later date as we build up our removal forces and as laws are changed,” Trump tweeted. “Please do not make yourselves too comfortable, you will be leaving soon!”

If confirmed, Morgan would play a key role in enacting such proposals. He served as the head of U.S. Border Patrol for the final months of Barack Obama’s presidency but was quickly fired by Trump, which Carlson and other conservatives have used to lend a veneer of bipartisan righteousness to his defense of the president’s immigration plans. “You were taken out of your job by Donald Trump, but you’re here to tell us that a wall makes sense anyway?” Carlson asked him back in January, in his first appearance on the show. “Correct,” Morgan said. “The president is right.” As HuffPost noted, Morgan would go on to make close to 100 media appearances in the ensuing five months to defend Trump’s batshit policies. And, like so many others who stand up for Trump on T.V., his name soon surfaced for a possible administration role.

Trump announced earlier this month that he’d be picking his hardline television cheerleader to help I.C.E. enact his “strong, fair and sound” agenda. “Mark is a true believer and American Patriot,” Trump tweeted. “He will do a great job.” That role was initially set aside for acting I.C.E. director Ronald Vitiello, but Trump abruptly scrapped his nomination in April, telling reporters that he wanted to go in a “tougher direction.” Whether Morgan can suitably fill that role in the eyes of the tempestuous president remains to be seen. But he already has two things going for him: a performative, unwavering commitment to Trump, and—apparently—a sixth sense for sniffing out budding gang members.

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