Trump speech costs him backing of Texas Hispanic advisers

Not quite two weeks after Donald Trump met in New York with a National Hispanic Advisory Council convened to recommend ways for him to engage Latino voters, his no-holds-barred, hard-line immigration policy speech Wednesday has most of his Texas advisers scurrying for the exit.

“It was very disappointing. There was nothing pro-business in that speech last night. After I heard it there was no way I could continue to be part of a prop apparatus for Mr. Trump, so I resigned and it’s a sad day because I am no fan of Hillary Clinton,” Jacob Monty, a Houston immigration lawyer, said in an interview on MSNBC Thursday.

Monty is one of six Texans on the 23-member advisory committee — more than from any other state. At least three of the other members from Texas also appeared to be disassociating themselves from the council and Trump’s candidacy.

Nationally, CBS News reported Thursday that 15 of nearly two dozen members of the council had resigned.

Politico reported that Pastor Ramiro Peña, founder of Waco’s Christ the King Church, had sent a message to Jennifer Korn, the Republican National Committee’s national director for Hispanic initiatives, and other RNC and Trump campaign officials, expressing his deep disappointment with Trump’s speech.

“I am so sorry but I believe Mr. Trump lost the election tonight,” Peña said in the message. “The ‘National Hispanic Advisory Council seems to be simply for optics and I do not have the time or energy for a scam.”

“I will pray over the next couple of days but it is difficult to [imagine] how I can continue to associate with the Trump campaign,” he wrote. “I owe my national audience an explanation.”

Massey Villareal of Houston, former president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and National Republican Hispanic Assembly, told NBC Latino that he was done with the Trump campaign after Wednesday’s speech, which he described as “awful.”

“As a compassionate conservative, I am disappointed with the immigration speech,” he said. “I am no longer supporting Trump for president, but cannot with any conscience support Hillary.”

Rick Figueroa, an investment executive and Republican activist from Brenham, had a similar reaction.

“I am very disappointed in Mr. Trump’s immigration mistake,” Figueroa tweeted, expressing his regret that Trump had ignored the “wise counsel” being offered by his Hispanic supporters.

“It was a leadership mistake. It was a political mistake. It was a moral mistake,” Figueroa tweeted.

The other two Texans on the advisory committee are former U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla and Eddie Adlrete, senior vice president of IBC Bank in San Antonio.

Monty said that Wednesdays’ speech was all the more crushing a disappointment because Trump had raised their hopes last week that he was listening to them and fashioning a more moderate, humane policy when he came to Austin for a fundraiser, rally and taping of Sean Hannity’s show on Fox.

“After listening to the Sean Hannity town hall in Austin, Texas, I was so excited. I thought, ‘Boy, this is someone who can bring the hardliners to the table and actually get an immigration bill though Congress.’ There was so much hope,” Monty said on MSNBC. The council met with Trump in New York the Saturday before the Austin visit.

“There was hope yesterday when he went to Mexico,” Monty said. “He looked like a president. He looked like somebody who was trying to solve the problem. For him to turn and just disregard everything we talked about a week-a-half ago and just recite the talking points from FAIR and Numbers USA [two organizations that favor restrictive immigration policies], that was disappointing.”

Anticipation blown

“There was so much anticipation leading up to his speech. We had met with him a week-and-a-half ago,” Monty said. “He appeared to be ready to announce a pro-business, compassionate solution to the immigration problem and boy, we listened intently and we were hoping for some glimmer of the Donald Trump we met with a week-and-a-half ago, but it never came.”

Asked to explain what happened, Monty speculated that Trump either listens to the last voice he hears, or that he isn’t really interested in being elected president and is more focused on developing a post-election media empire appealing to his “nativist” consituency.

Fort Worth Republican Juan Hernandez, who was an adviser to former Mexican President Vicente Fox, had parted ways with Trump long before Wednesday’s speech. And it was clear that the candidate’s appearance in Phoenix did nothing to woo Hernandez back into the GOP campaign tent this year.

In an appearance on FOX Business Network, Hernandez said Latinos are “so tired of the insults” from all sides.

As he has been for months, Hernandez is incensed over Trump’s depiction of Hispanics. “It is so unfair what Trump is doing, that he is trying to give the image of the undocumented as being people that are criminals, that are rapists. I’m sorry, but … the group that least commits crimes in this nation are the undocumented,” he said.

“… They are a blessing to our nation, they do not take jobs, they help to create jobs,” Hernandez added.

Later, on Twitter, he reminded followers that he’s backing Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson and remarked, “To all my Latino brothers and sisters: Come on over; the water is warm!”

Alfonso Aguilar, president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, had prominently endorsed Trump after initially opposing his candidacy. He, too, said Trump had signaled a willingness to moderate some of his immigration plans, including limiting his call for deportations to those convicted of crimes.

“At this point, I just don’t see how I can support him. So I’m withdrawing my support,” Aguilar said. “I was expecting something very different last night. I’m not naive, I knew who I was dealing with. I knew this could happen. It was a risk.

“From a political perspective, this is the end of Donald Trump. I really think now he’s definitely going to lose.”

Staff writer John Gravois contributed to this report, which includes material from the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press.

This story was originally published September 1, 2016 at 6:17 PM with the headline "Trump speech costs him backing of Texas Hispanic advisers."