GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he will have a meeting with Enrique Peña Nieto, the president of Mexico. Mexico’s government later confirmed Trump and Peña Nieto would meet privately.
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According to Bloomberg reports, Mexican officials confirmed that invitations were made to both the Trump and Clinton campaigns.
Then on Tuesday night in Washington, where Trump was speaking to a rally in Everett, Trump tweeted out the announcement that is is going to Mexico on Wednesday.
“What you’ve seen with Mr. Trump is he’s been remarkably consistent in his pledge to end illegal immigration”, Trump’s senior communications adviser Jason Miller told “Fox & Friends”. Hardline immigration policies including calls for deportations are a key plank of his campaign.
Foreign trips by presidential candidates, even to a neighboring country such as Mexico, are an enormous logistical and security undertaking.
The meeting appeared to be a gamble by Pena Nieto, whose popularity has slumped to all-time lows, and opposition politicians reacted with dismay. His campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on Bloomberg TV’s “With All Due Respect” that Trump’s proposals would include building a wall on the U.S. -Mexico border, ending sanctuary cities and offering no amnesty for immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.
Earlier this month Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission accused police of tampering with evidence.
When he launched his presidential campaign previous year, he used some of the most incendiary language of his candidacy in describing some Mexicans as drug dealers, “rapists” and other criminals.
Trump is scheduled to speak Wednesday evening in Phoenix, joined by his running mate, governor Mike Pence, where he will lay out his immigration plans.
Trump’s shifting position on immigration has left most ardent supporters, who catapulted him to the nomination, anxious he could abandon his original stance on the matter.
Doug Ducey will give the welcoming remarks at the Trump rally. He’s recently softened language about deporting the estimate 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
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But she stressed Trump was committed to a “fair and humane” approach to securing America’s borders. (New York Times reporter Elizabeth Malkin tweeted that the immediate reaction to the news in Mexico was “furious.”) It’s not clear how Trump will fare either.
