Getty Clinton camp blasts Trump's Mexico visit

Donald Trump's meeting in Mexico with President Enrique Peña Nieto ahead of his immigration speech Wednesday night in Phoenix will not change anything about what he has previously said about the country or its people, a top aide for Hillary Clinton's campaign said.

"From the first days of his campaign, Donald Trump has painted Mexicans as 'rapists’ and criminals and has promised to deport 16 million people, including children and U.S. citizens. He has said we should force Mexico to pay for his giant border wall. He has said we should ban remittances to families in Mexico if Mexico doesn't pay up," communications director Jennifer Palmieri said in a statement following confirmation of Trump's visit to Mexico City.


Trump's campaign kickoff speech last June referred to immigrants from Mexico as criminals, "rapists," and "some, I assume are good people," and he has repeatedly vowed to make the Mexican government pay for the costs of building the massive wall on the United States' southern border.

"What ultimately matters is what Donald Trump says to voters in Arizona, not Mexico, and whether he remains committed to the splitting up of families and deportation of millions," Palmieri said in a statement.

Lorella Praeli, Clinton’s Latino outreach director, echoed Palmieri’s statement but went a step further, branding Trump’s visit to Mexico a distraction from his rhetoric over the past 14 months.

“His policy is to take away deferred action from childhood arrivals, to take away protection from deportation, from dreamers in our country and put them on a path to deportation. That is the plan here,” she told CNN. “I don't want to get distracted. I don't think the American people will allow themselves to get distracted when Donald Trump has made this the core of his campaign. The one policy that he has explained to us over the last 14 months is his immigration policy, and that is exactly what's happening here. We cannot allow ourselves to get distracted by changing headlines or an attempt to distract us from his real policy.”

Asked whether Clinton will accept the Mexican president’s invitation as well, Praeli noted that the former secretary of state met with him in 2014.

“She looks forward to doing so again in the future,” Praeli said.

Senior Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson retweeted a Trump message from February 2015 in which the businessman, then mulling a presidential bid, delivered a shot across the bow to the U.S.' southern neighbors and offered a preview of rhetoric to come.

"The Mexican legal system is corrupt, as is much of Mexico. Pay me the money that is owed me now - and stop sending criminals over our border," said Trump, who at the time was engaged in litigation in the country over a resort in Baja.

And Clinton joined the onslaught, too, tweeting a link to “A big, beautiful list of literally every tweet Donald Trump has sent about Mexico over the last two years.”

The Republican nominee's campaign has maintained that Trump will not be softening his immigration proposal, including on deportation measures, but privately those close to the campaign have conceded to POLITICO that Trump needs to improve his standing among Hispanic and Latino voters to have a fighting chance in the battleground states of Florida, Colorado and Nevada.