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Trump to meet in Mexico with the country’s president

The meeting falls on the same day that Trump says he will deliver a “major” immigration speech in Arizona, a week after he suggested he was “softening” his immigration approach.

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Last week, Pena Nieto extended invitations to visit Mexico to both Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, who met with him in Mexico in 2014.

Trump has controversially called Mexican migrants “criminals” and “rapists” during his campaign.

Trump’s views rocketed him to the top of the GOP field and propelled him to the Republican nomination, but the issue has bedeviled him in the general election campaign.

Trump has been trying to clarify his stand on illegal immigration.

Trump tweeted that he had accepted Peña Nieto’s invitation to meet shortly before he took the stage Tuesday night at a rally in Washington state.

The visit comes after Trump has wavered for weeks on whether he will continue to hold his hard-line positions on the central and incendiary issue of his campaign, in particular his call to deport an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally.

The Washington Post first reported the possible visit, citing sources in Mexico and the US.

Trump’s past comments on building a wall on the southwestern border and making Mexico pay for it, and his references to Mexico “sending people that have lots of problems” to the US – including “rapists” – set off a firestorm on both sides of the border. Former Mexican Presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon have also alluded to Hitler in describing Trump.

When he launched his presidential campaign past year, he used some of the most incendiary language of his candidacy in describing some Mexicans as drug dealers, “rapists” and other criminals.

Several Republican foreign policy experts have also warned that Trump is unprepared for the numerous worldwide issues that land on a president’s desk.

And in a July interview, he told CNN that “there is no way that Mexico could pay for a wall like that”.

But both Trump and Nieto have publicly expressed a willingness in recent weeks to meet with one another.

In the days since, Trump and his staff have broadcast varied and conflicting messages – though on Wednesday Conway, appeared to make clear that Trump had decided against allowing immigrants in the USA illegally to stay.

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Trump was to deliver his remarks at 6 p.m. MST (09:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday) in Phoenix, Arizona, a state that has been at the heart of the debate over the porous US border with Mexico. His trip to Mexico would come between his events, AP says.

Trump Reportedly Eyes Meeting With Mexican President Who Called Him Hitler