NCLR’s Janet Murguía blasts Trump: Latinos won’t be ‘a punching bag’

The head of one of the largest Latino civil rights organizations blasted Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Tuesday night, condemning his repeated comments on immigrants and Mexico and saying that Latinos will not be a “punching bag,” urging them instead to use the vote to “punch back.”

Janet Murguía, the President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, took the podium at the NCLR Capital Awards in D.C. While Murguía emphasized that the NCLR is a non-partisan Latino civil rights organization, she denounced what she called Trump’s nativism and demagoguery that “fly in the face of American values.” She said his xenophobia and religious bigotry “might as well have painted a target on [Latinos’] backs.”