“Cooperation toward achieving the shared objective to both the United States and to Mexico”, he said.
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But for all the tough talk in his Phoenix speech on building a border wall, restricting visas and aggressively deporting criminal illegal aliens, two items stood out.
“We will issue detainers for illegal immigrants arrested for any crime whatsoever”, he said. “There will be no amnesty”, he added, saying immigrants in the country without permission who wish to seek legal status must return to their home countries in order to do so. What he did not mention was his promise to deport immediately the 11 million undocumented migrants living in the US.
“The humiliation is now complete”, tweeted Carlos Loret de Mola, a popular Mexican television anchor, fuming that Mr Trump had been allowed to alight in his country, and worse, that Mr Pena Nieto had failed to solicit an apology from the American presidential candidate for his frequently denigrating the country and its citizens.
More than 6,000 supporters were inside the Convention Centre to listen to Trump amid heavy security.
“Importantly, in several years, when we have accomplished all of our enforcement and deportation goals and truly ended illegal immigration for good. then, and only then, will we be in a position to consider the appropriate disposition of those individuals who remain”, he said.
He spent days floating a series of possible changes and gauging the reaction, and even visited Mexico for a few hours Wednesday in a bid to appear more presidential. “It is deeply unpopular with voters, and profoundly un-American”.
“I’ve not been jubilant jumping on the bandwagon but I was really thrilled with his speech and as far as him saying we didn’t discuss it, that doesn’t mean the Mexican president didn’t say ‘hey by the way we’re not going to pay for the wall.’ To me that shows that Trump is growing in diplomacy”. He claimed that he and Peña Nieto didn’t discuss who would build his proposed big, handsome border wall, a claim that Peña Nieto is merrily wrecking on Twitter. With the meeting held behind closed doors, it was impossible to know who was telling the truth.
For weeks, Donald Trump flirted with a self-described “softening” of the hard-line immigration policies that propelled him to the Republican nomination, raising the hopes of party officials, some Hispanic leaders and.
Amid the growing uproar in Mexico over the meeting, Pena Nieto told Televisa’s Denise Maerker that he’d invited Trump because his policies are a threat to Mexico – precisely the reason why most Mexicans think he shouldn’t have met with him. Trump has long said that Mexico would foot the bill.
Trump also promised to restrict legal immigration, calling for a commission that would keep the percentage of foreign-born people in the country to “historic norms”. Yet, standing on American soil, he addressed directly a question he sidestepped when asked in Mexico.
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Other Latino advisers, including Florida pastor Mario Bramnick and Kentucky State Senator Ralph Alvardo, said they would continue working with the Trump campaign.
