At least two members of Donald Trump’s Hispanic Advisory Council are sticking with the Republican nominee after his speech in Phoenix was chock-full of hardline rhetoric on immigration.
Pastor Alfonso Delgado told CNN on Thursday that he will not resign from the council because he wants to continue to work with Trump on his deportation policy, even though he acknowledged that Trump’s positions are confusing.
“There is some areas of confusion because we need to know exactly how he’s going to apply what he wants to do,” Delgado told CNN.
He noted that some members of the council have resigned “because they are upset at his speech yesterday,” but he argued that Trump’s advisers need to keep telling “him what we believe is more humane.”
“If we retreat, we cannot continue speaking, we cannot continue showing what we believe that he should be doing,” he said.
In particular, Delgado said he needs Trump to clarify how undocumented immigrants who are deported will be able to gain re-entry into the United States. Delgado worried that if Trump’s plan forces families to wait for months or years to return to the U.S, it would be a “devastating thing for those families.”
He also suggested that Trump’s supporters should have expected a hardline speech from Trump.
“We all knew what was the basic of his plans,” he told CNN. “He is the only one that had one, and we know that he has no amnesty in it, and we knew from the very beginning that he wants to get everybody out.”
Delgado said that he will still vote for Trump, noting that immigration is “only one issue.”
Another member of the Hispanic Advisory Council for Trump’s campaign also told TPM that he is standing with Trump after Wednesday’s speech.
“Donald Trump’s speech, I think, was amazing, and it was refreshing, to be honest with you, to finally have somebody who was telling the truth to the American people,” George Rivera, the chair of the Pueblo County GOP in Colorado, told TPM in a phone interview.
“It didn’t surprise me at all what he said because it’s in line with what he’s been talking about doing since the very start,” he added.
