Jacob Monty, who resigned from Donald Trump’s Hispanic Advisory Council after the Republican nominee’s Wednesday speech on immigration, lamented on Thursday that his hope that Trump would soften his policy on deportation disappeared Wednesday night.
“I was actively defending him on media because I thought he heard us. We met with him a week and a half ago. He indicated that he knew we needed to do something humane for the non-criminals that are here, the 11 million. He brought it up. That showed us that he had studied the issue. And we had a lot of hope. And frankly, we saw a lot of hope,” Monty said on CNN.
“We saw nothing but positive signs. And they were all dashed yesterday with a speech that was not Republican and not compassionate at all,” he added.
Monty said that he supports much of Trump’s immigration policy, like building a wall, but that he cannot stand behind the Republican nominee’s position on deportation of undocumented immigrants.
“When he called for the deportation of DACA recipients, that is just unrealistic, cruel, not productive for the economy because they’re working, they’re going to school. The biggest thing for me is when he completely punted on the issue of what to do with the 11 million when we discussed that with him,” he said. “He completely punted on that issue. And when I saw that, I had to resign because I’m not going to be a prop for his image like the president of Mexico was yesterday.”
He said that he left the advisory council because he is “unwilling to be part of his propaganda machine.”
“It was the right thing for me to do to try to see if we could reason with him and get him to articulate a plan that was realistic and Republican. But what we heard last night was not a Republican plan,” he said. “That was pure populist propaganda.”
