Key Latino surrogates for Donald Trump have withdrawn their support for the Republican nominee after his hardline immigration speech Wednesday, during which he restated his call for a deportation task force.
Ramiro Peña, a Texas pastor and member of Trump’s National Hispanic Advisory Council, called the nominee’s bid a "scam" upon his resignation and said the speech likely cost him the election, Politico reported Thursday. Another member of the council, Jacob Monty, also resigned after the speech, expressing disappointment that Trump did not address immigration "realistically and compassionately."
"When we met [earlier in August] he was going to approach this issue with a realistic plan, a compassionate plan, with a plan that was not disruptive to the immigrants that were here that were not lawbreakers," Monty said. "He didn’t deliver any of that."
Alfonso Aguilar, the president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, told CNN he felt misled by Trump’s campaign after vows from the Republican nominee that he would soften his stance toward illegal immigrants. He told Politico he was "inclined" to withdraw his support.
Trump told an audience in Phoenix, Arizona on Wednesday that every undocumented immigrant in the U.S. was subject to deportation and called for a sweeping crackdown.
Aguilar said the policies outlined in the speech were "even worse than what he initially proposed."
"It’s so disappointing because we feel we took a chance, a very risky chance," Aguilar told Politico. "We decided to make a big U-turn to see if we could make him change. We thought we were moving in the right direction ... we’re disappointed. We feel misled."
Trump has struggled to gain support among Latinos, running nearly even to Mitt Romney’s abysmal numbers in the 2012 election. An NBC/SurveyMonkey poll released last week showed Trump at 22 percent with Hispanic voters.