It is sufficiently incoherent as to suggest you aren't interested in the serious discussion you are requesting in response. You could better refute this by starting with a policy you would consider cruel, and the in turn demonstrating how this one doesn't fit it.

Historically i've tended to agree that "the cruelty is the point" was too dismissive for the policies in question. But with immigration policy of this admin, I'm not sure that's the case. For a while they were deporting people to the equivalent of a Gulag, and literally suggested that if people were afraid of that outcome they should self deport. I think that would be a pretty fair example of a policy where the cruelty was the literal point: The hope was it would be viewed with sufficient fear as to dissuade people from staying in the country illegally. However seriously you think immigration should be taken, and however many people you feel should be deported, there are policy choices that do not involve that level of cruelty that could be chosen instead. That they are intentionally not is what the term "The cruelty is the point" is meant to imply.