“Trump not welcome in Mexico, not by me nor the 130 million Mexicans”, tweeted the country’s former president Vicente Fox, who dropped an “f-bomb” on television in February when describing Trump’s border wall plan.
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Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump yesterday stood alongside Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto and reiterated his campaign declaration that the United States can and will erect a border wall to stem illegal immigration. When it comes to legal immigration, Trump said he wants to see “extreme vetting”, and new screening tests “to make sure those we are admitting to our country share our values and love our people”.
He pledged to enhance border controls beyond the wall – which he said his administration would build “in record time and at a reasonable cost” – with 5,000 more border patrol agents and “many more” stations.
Abraham Garnica, 31, who works as an engineer in Mexico City, was left like most Mexicans, scratching his head while trying to think of a reason why Pena Nieto might have agreed to the meeting. The candidate is deeply unpopular in Mexico due in large part to his deriding the country as a source of rapists and criminals as he kicked off his campaign. A former Mexican president bluntly told the celebrity businessman that, despite Pena Nieto’s hospitality, he was not welcome.
“We don’t like him. We reject his visit”, Fox said on CNN, calling the trip a “political stunt”.
It wasn’t until Wednesday morning, just hours before the meeting, that Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway confirmed that there would be a press availability following the meeting at which reporters would be able to ask questions.
“They must be afraid he might win, and so they’re saying, ‘Just in case, we’ll shake his hand”, Garnica said.
Trump and the Mexican leader met behind closed doors and emerged speaking about their “shared objective” to boost the economies of both nations.
Trump has mulled whether to soften his positions, particularly the call early in his campaign to deport some 11 million undocumented migrants living in the shadows.
“Mexico will pay for the wall, 100 percent”, the NY businessman said.
At least two demonstrations are planned in Mexico City as Mexicans express anger about the visit of Donald Trump. The newspaper El Universal wrote in an editorial that Trump “caught Mexican diplomats off guard”.
Spokespeople for the Trump campaign did not immediately comment on the matter.
“People have to get to know that they can count on you, that you won’t say one thing one day and something totally different the next”, she told the American Legion in Cincinnati.
Aides said he would reaffirm his determination to build a border wall and to quickly deport illegal immigrants who have committed crimes in the United States.
Pena Nieto, who said he has extended an identical invitation to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to visit his country, said the two nations benefit most when their relationship is rooted in “mutual respect”.
If Trump’s latest claim about his conversation with Nieto turns out to be false, what’s most surprising wouldn’t be the fiction – it’s that the Mexican president was standing next to the GOP standard bearer when he claimed the wall’s funding wasn’t discussed.
Mexico City-based security analyst Alejandro Hope suggested that Pena Nieto “wanted to invite Hillary, but that meant inviting both of them, and nobody thought Trump would accept first”.
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The lightning-speed meeting with Mexican Presid-ent Enrique Peña Nieto will take place in the frenzied build-up to Mr Tru-mp’s speech in Arizona Wednesday night clarifying his policy on immigration. In a March interview, he said that “there is no scenario” under which Mexico would do so and compared Trump’s language to that of dictators Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The Mexican leader’s office confirmed the meeting with its own tweet, saying the two men would meet privately.
