“This election is our last chance to secure the border, stop illegal immigration, and reform our laws to make your life better”, Trump said in Phoenix at the end of a dizzying day in which he made his first foray into worldwide diplomacy with a visit to Mexico City, then baited a fired-up crowd with red-meat rhetoric. He did however claim that under his presidency, there would be no path to legal status for the undocumented immigrants living illegally in the United States.
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The Republican presidential nominee on Wednesday re-upped the harsh immigration rhetoric that electrified his primary campaign, vowing “no amnesty” for undocumented migrants living in the United States and promising to build a “beautiful” and “impenetrable” border wall that Mexico would pay for – hours after that country’s president vowed that it wouldn’t. His supporters cite the flow of drugs across the border and Trump himself has repeatedly highlighted victims of crimes committed by immigrants in the country illegally, something he made a big part of his Wednesday night speech.
The good feelings from his first meeting with a head of state as his party’s presidential nominee lasted only a short time, as a dispute arose in the hours after he left Mexico City over the most contentious part of the billionaire’s plans to fight illegal immigration – his insistence that Mexico must pay to build a physical wall along the roughly 2,000-mile US southern border. Any person living in the country illegally who is arrested “for any crime whatsoever,” he said, will immediately be placed into deportation proceedings.
Trump’s visit to Mexico wasn’t particularly well received by the people of Mexico either. “Believe me. A hundred percent”, Trump said. He called Trump’s speech the outline of “a coherent and workable strategy”.
“If we can save American lives, American jobs and American futures, together we can save America itself”, Trump said.
Despite Trump’s incendiary speech, Pena Nieto said he believes “there is a change of tone, a recognition of Mexico’s importance”, adding that the meeting was a “rapprochement” that “will not change all the positions” the controversial White House hopeful holds against Mexico.
“We have to have a country, folks”, he said. Trump delivered the hardline speech on immigration soon after he met the Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto. It was his first meeting with a head of state as his party’s presidential nominee.
Yet, standing on American soil, he addressed directly a question he sidestepped when asked in Mexico. But he quickly said on Twitter that the wall came up, and there was no way Mexico would be paying.
– He would prioritize the immediate removal of those with criminal records and “on Day One” would authorize federal and local law enforcement to begin round-ups because “they know every one of these criminals”. “From there, the conversation addressed other issues, and developed in a respectful manner”, Pena Nieto wrote.
Trump launched his campaign past year by declaring that Mexico was sending “rapists” and other criminals across the border.
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Trump was cheered in Arizona, but his appearance in Mexico sparked anger and protests. He piled on in the months to come, attacked the country over free trade, illegal immigration and border security.
