Dario Aguirre, a 64-year-old Mexican-American immigration lawyer based in Denver, had for decades been able to see his own values reflected in those espoused by the Republican Party and its leadership.

For Aguirre, a military veteran, Election Day had always represented a fairly straightforward decision—at least, until 2016, that is.

“The last election, I didn’t vote,” Aguirre told Newsweek. “I couldn’t even vote.”

Afraid that a Donald Trump presidency might bring about the kind of division that is currently tearing its way through the U.S., Aguirre said he felt compelled to stay home on November 8, 2016. He didn’t want to betray his party, but he couldn’t bring himself to support it either, so long as Trump was at its helm.

In the years since and with another federal election on the horizon, however, Aguirre says that he has never felt so disenfranchised by the “disgusting” policies and rhetoric coming out of the White House on the Republican Party’s watch.

“It’s not the same party I identified with in my youth,” Aguirre said. “That party doesn’t exist anymore.”

The GOP that Aguirre remembers was one that, historically, had long embraced a largely “pro-immigration” stance, with even former President Ronald Reagan once railing against the very measures that Trump has used as the building blocks of his own platform.

At a 1980 GOP presidential debate in Houston, Texas, for example, Reagan spoke warmly about the U.S.’s “neighbour to the south” and insisted that “rather than talking about putting up a fence,” the U.S. and Mexico should strive to “work out some recognition” of the “mutual problems” that they share.

Much like Reagan famously said when he parted ways with the Democratic Party and joined the GOP, Aguirre said: “I didn’t leave the party, the party left me.”

Where does that leave him? “Disenfranchised,” the immigration lawyer said. “That is me. I’m at a loss, so that is why I’ve gone into basically the dormant mode, as far as voting goes.”

In the wake of Saturday’s deadly El Paso shooting, which is being investigated as a domestic terrorism case believed to have been driven by anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiments, Aguirre said that many of his clients feel like there is a target on their backs.

“They feel persecuted in the sense that there is a new other… It’s never been just so raw and blatant, at least not in my memory,” Aguirre said.

As a Mexican-American himself, the immigration lawyer says he also feels the impact of anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiments in the U.S.

“I identify too. I’m part of that demographic,” he said. “You can always disregard my socioeconomic standing, my suit, my shoes… For many people in America, I’m just a Mexican and that’s the first that they’re going to see.”

Like many others, Aguirre said he holds Trump responsible for having stoked anti-immigrant sentiments in the country, with the U.S. leader facing blame for having allowed the beliefs that appear to have fuelled Saturday’s attack to thrive.

“It all goes back to the other… that the other will not replace us. That’s been the theme with Trump since he announced his presidential campaign,” Aguirre said.

The Republican immigration lawyer said he was also left baffled by Trump’s apparent promotion of “unity” in the wake of the El Paso attack, while continuing to rail against immigrants in the U.S. and overseeing mass U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Mississippi just a few days later.

“It’s either intentional or it’s just not thought-out. Both are bad options,” he said. “But, it does seem consistent with what Trump does, in terms of saying, ‘sure, we need to stop hate in America’ and then immediately creating fear by rounding up hundreds of people.”

“Abnormal is the new normal now,” he said. “It’s either a mastermind of stupidity or it’s intentional… Either way, it’s pretty disgusting.”