Donald Trump has tapped 25 religious leaders to serve on his new evangelical advisory board, including a man who’s championed the same executive actions on immigration that Trump has vowed to overturn.
Tony Suarez, a Virginia-based pastor who serves as executive vice president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, is one of two dozen executive board members of a religious committee unveiled by Trump on Tuesday.
He is also a steadfast supporter of the executive orders President Obama signed in 2014 to grant temporary legal status to millions of immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally and expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. At the time, Obama said his action would enable illegal immigrants to “come out of the shadows and get right with the law.”
“I support President #Obama taking executive action regarding #immigration #reform,” Suarez wrote on his personal blog in November 2014.
“Political grandstanding and partisan politics are to blame for the current crisis. Families continue to be divided and marriages torn apart while one party claims to uphold traditional family and marriage values,” Suareza added, taking an indirect jab at congressional Republicans.
In January 2014, Suarez attended Obama’s State of the Union address as the guest of Democratic Congressman Luis Gutierrez, who’s been a vocal proponent of granting reprieve to illegal immigrants and has railed against Trump this election cycle for running the “ugliest, most xenophobic, most anti-immigrant campaign in anyone’s memory.”
Last November, Suarez took to Facebook to slam both Trump and the religious leaders supporting him.
In a separate Facebook status posted months prior, Suarez claimed Trump was “putting on a clinic of how to NOT win the Latino vote or the White House.” The post linked to video footage of a man telling Latino journalist Jorge Ramos to “get out of my country” during a press conference with Trump.
“His candidacy needs to end like his last reality television program. It needs to be canceled,” Suarez told conservative Latinos at a gathering held hours before the October GOP primary debate in Boulder, Colo.
Trump has long advocated for building a 1,000-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, ending birthright citizenship and deporting the 11 million immigrants currently residing in the country illegally.
In March, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee vowed to “overturn every single executive order that Obama has put in place,” including his action on immigration, the legality of which is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court.
Suarez and others were not required to endorse Trump before joining his evangelical advisory board, which includes prominent conservative Christians like former Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.
However, in a statement released by his campaign, Trump said he had “such tremendous respect and admiration” for the board members of the advisory committee.
“I look forward to continuing to talk about the issues important to Evangelicals, and all Americans, and the common sense solutions I will implement when I am President,” he said.
Trump has not previously met with Suarez, but delivered a two-minute video address to attendees of an NHCLC summit in California last month. In an email to the Washington Examiner, Suarez reaffirmed that his inclusion on the advisory committee “is by no means an endorsement” of Trump.
“It is an attempt to dialogue and work through the issues that are important to the Latino and Christian community,” he said, adding that he feels he “can best serve the Body of Christ and the Latino community by coming to a table of reason rather than exchanging rhetoric for rhetoric.”
