Hispanic Republicans applaud ‘softening’ of tone

WASHINGTON — Even as Donald Trump arrived in Texas on Tuesday to raise money and rally support for a massive border wall, some conservative Hispanics who are backing his presidential bid say there may be less to his tough rhetoric on immigration than meets the eye.

Several who met with Trump over the weekend at his iconic tower in New York say he solicited their advice on a more “humane and efficient” approach to the 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally who Trump famously said “have to go.”

The Republican nominee did not commit to specific proposals in his 90-minute meeting with the newly formed National Hispanic Advisory Council for Trump, a group that includes six Texans.

However, in a taping of a town hall Tuesday in Austin with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump acknowledged that he is open to “softening” laws dealing with illegal immigrants.

“There certainly can be a softening because we’re not looking to hurt people,” Trump said. “We want people — we have some great people in this country.”

The weekend meeting, described as “game-changing” by Helen Aguirre Ferre, the Republican National Committee’s director of Hispanic communications, suggests Trump is seeking to repair his badly strained relationship with Latinos and broaden his appeal in a race in which polls show him falling behind Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Direction still unclear

Some analysts say it could be a pivot fraught with danger as he encounters criticism for softening or muddling his signature campaign thrust on border security and immigration, the focus of his first campaign ad, a $4.8 million spot now running in four battleground states.

Daniel Garza, whose Mission-based Libre Initiative has received millions of dollars from GOP backers Charles and David Koch, said it is unclear which direction Trump may be headed.

“There’s confusing messaging coming out of his campaign right now,” said Garza, who worked in the George W. Bush White House. “Is he going to pivot or not? And is he going to soften his position on the sort of harsh rhetoric he started off with? But, more importantly, is he going to change his policy positions?”

The answer, according to Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on CNN: “To be determined.”

Houston-area businessman Rick Figueroa, one of the participants in the New York meeting, said he was heartened by Trump’s apparent openness to new ideas on immigration.

“For Kellyanne to say ‘To be determined,’ that’s pretty big,” he said.

While Figueroa supports Trump, he said he is looking for an element of “grace” in the Republican nominee’s approach to immigration. He also sees no process for deporting an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants en masse.

“I think he’s going to have to clarify exactly what he wants to do,” Figueroa said.

One strategy reportedly discussed in the meeting in New York was a plan that would require illegal immigrants seeking legal status to first return to their native countries, a process called “touch back.” Trump also reportedly asked about another version of that plan, which only would require undocumented residents to register with their embassies or consulates in the United States, an idea called “internal touch back.”

“He’s always said people have to leave, but the good ones would be able to return quickly,” said Alfonso Aguilar, a former Bush administration official who has come around to Trump. “A lot of people focused on his more bombastic statements on deportation and the wall, but from the beginning he talked about people who have no criminal record returning to the country.”

Aguilar, president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, has been a leading proponent of letting illegal immigrants legalize their status at their embassies or consulates. He recently outlined the proposal in a memo to the RNC and the Trump campaign, noting that international law treats embassies and consulates as foreign territory. “This would not force Trump to change what he has already outlined,” he said.

To some immigration hard-liners, either version constitutes “amnesty,” because it could give immigrants who enter the country illegally an expedited leg up on those who have not.

While Trump’s critics say he would be flip-flopping on deportation, his supporters say he has been consistent and point to statements like one he made last year on CNN:

“I would get people out and then have an expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal,” Trump told interviewer Dana Bash. “I want to move ’em out, and we’re going to move ’em back in and let them be legal.”

As Trump prepares for a major address on immigration, the debate has intensified over how a Trump administration would handle the problem of immigrants who have long been in the country illegally.

While Trump’s position on immigration has been symbolized by the wall he plans to build with Mexican money, some of his Hispanic advisers say he has left the door open to different pathways to citizenship or legal status. Some of those pathways would be abhorrent to his most loyal supporters — white working-class voters who helped him sweep to the GOP nomination.

Despite any push-back, Hispanic Advisory Council member Massey Villareal, a Republican businessman in Houston, said he sees little chance that Trump’s hardright supporters will defect to Clinton. Villareal did not attend the meeting in New York and acknowledged that he “can’t defend all of Mr. Trump’s comments toward Latinos.” Still, he said he welcomes Trump’s willingness to distinguish between those undocumented immigrants who are law-abiding and those who are not.

“We need a solution where you take the waiter and the lawn guy on one side, and take the guy who wants to sell us drugs or fly a plane into our buildings, and separate the two,” he said. “That’s how you start.”

‘Gone a little overboard’

Whether that becomes official Trump policy, his critics see his new overtures to Hispanics and other minorities as the dramatic pivot of a flailing politician.

“It’s a craven political attempt at brown-washing Trump,” said Ricardo Reyes, a former Bush administration and Tesla executive who co-founded a pro-Clinton Republican group called R4C16. “I do not take it as a message to the Hispanic community. I think it’s much more of a message to his white followers who think he’s gone a little overboard.”

Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which took the unusual step of making a presidential endorsement in favor of Clinton, said he doubts that any amount of “hispandering” can outrun Trump’s provocative statements offending Latinos.

He listed the candidate’s calls for mass deportation, building a wall that no ladder can breach, his attack on a judge of Mexican ancestry and his description of illegal immigrants as drug dealers and rapists.

“This is the day of reckoning,” Palomarez said. “He’s got to figure out how to call it all back. But you can’t un-ring the bell.”