Javier Palomarez of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and a member of Donald Trump’s White House Diversity Council resigned on the air during an interview with HLN’s Carol Costello earlier today:
Costello: “Why didn’t the president make this announcement himself?”
Palomarez: “You know, that remains a mystery to me. He punted it to Jeff Sessions to make the announcement. At the end of the day what is important here is that DACA has been rescinded and we now and we now face the spectre of what are we going to do with these eight hundred thousand young people who are here who arrived on average before the age of six through no fault of their own. None of them received any kind of welfare benefits or government subsidies of any kind. They pay taxes. They're either employed or in school. They pay in excess of two billion dollars of state and local taxes on an annual basis. Sixty five thousand of them are graduating from high school every year and ten thousand are graduating from college every year.”
Costello: “Thank you for those facts...why didn’t he announce this himself? Did he want to distance himself from the announcement?”
Palomarez: “You know, I don't know what is in his heart. I am disappointed. He lied to the American people. He said that he believed in Dreamers, he said that he would take care of Dreamers. He said that he was going to focus the energies of the Department of Homeland Security on deporting criminals, these are not criminals. Every one of these individuals have been vetted rigorously, none of them have committed a crime of any sort. I don’t know why he decided to punt to Jeff Sessions but the fact of the matter is he’s nowhere to be seen today and I am completely disappointed by the way that he has handled this situation.
Costello: “Will you resign from the Diversity Council?”
Palomarez: “I effectively resign from that council immediately.”
Costello: “So you’ve already turned in your letter of resignation to the Trump administration?”
Palomarez: “There is no letter, this is it. I am resigning from that council right now. I see no reason to continue trying to work with people who clearly don’t see this issue the way I do. This wasn’t the only thing that we were focused on. I never believed in the wall but I wasn’t going to stand in the way of the wall. Nobody was going to die if a wall got built. But we’re talking about people's lives here and chief among them is the young people. Those who were brought here through no knowledge or any kind of decision of their own. They were brought here at the age of six or younger and they have worked hard to become good American citizens. We should be protecting these people not expelling them from this country.
Imagine what’s going to be happening in six months. Are we going to be breaking down doors in the middle of the night and pulling children from their parents? Do you think that any parent is willingly going to allow that to happen? Imagine what's going to happen. Somebody is going to get hurt. There is no way that a parent is going to allow somebody to walk into their home and grab their child to deport them to a country that frankly they don't even know. I don’t think that we’re thinking about this logically. Let’s propel ourselves forward into the end of the six months and what happens next. I’m hopeful that the Republicans who have already kind of stood up and illustrated the political courage that is necessary at a time like this, people like Paul Ryan, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Congressman Corbello, Congressman Kaufman and others will step up to this and act in a fashion that is illustrative of the America that we should be. We’re a country of broad shoulders and big hearts and we depend on these congressional leaders to get us to where we need to be with these eight hundred [sic] (he meant to say eight hundred thousand) innocent people.”
Gee, he’s got a list of Republicans that have "kind of” stood up. They must be evolutionary marvels in the Republican breed, just now growing spines so that they can kind of get vertical. As for expecting them to behave in a manner which is “illustrative of the America that we should be” — this guy is the dreamer.