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Everett — In a surprise move, Donald Trump was to travel to Mexico yesterday to meet with President Enrique Pena Nieto, just hours before the Republican delivers a highly anticipated speech on immigration.

Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday night to say he looks “very much forward” to meeting with the Mexican leader. Pena Nieto’s office confirmed the meeting with its own tweet, saying the two men would meet privately.

The unexpected trip comes as Trump seeks to clarify his stand on illegal immigration, a contentious issue that has been a centerpiece of his Republican presidential campaign.

Trump has long called for deporting people currently living in the US illegally and building a wall along the country’s border with Mexico.

But in meetings recently with Hispanic supporters, Trump has suggested he could be open to changing the hardline approach he outlined during the GOP primaries.

After one such roundtable this month, his new campaign manager said Trump’s stance on deportations was “to be determined.”

In the days since, Trump and his staff have broadcast varied and conflicting messages, with Trump himself saying one day he might be open to “softening” his stance, and days later saying he might, in fact, be “hardening.”

Pena Nieto has been sharply critical of Trump’s original immigration policy, particularly the Republican’s insistence that Mexico would pay for the border wall. In a March interview, Pena Nieto said that “there is no scenario” under which Mexico would do so.

In the same interview, Pena Nieto compared Trump’s language to that of dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, saying it had hurt US-Mexico relations.

Former Mexican Presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon have also alluded to Hitler in describing Trump.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a close Trump adviser, has been among those pushing Trump to make the trip to Mexico, according to a person familiar with their conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss them publicly.

Christie made his own successful trip to Mexico City in September 2014 and has a warm relationship with the Mexican president.

Pena Nieto extended invitations to visit Mexico to both Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton last week. The Washington Post first reported on Tuesday that Trump was considering making the trip to Mexico.

Trump was scheduled to speak on immigration last evening in Phoenix. He was already out West on Tuesday for a campaign stop near Seattle, giving him enough time to jet to Mexico before the  speech yesterday.

Trump’s short stop in Mexico marks his first campaign visit to a foreign country. The Republican has faced a torrent of criticism from Clinton, a former secretary of state, about his preparedness to lead on the world stage.

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

Clinton’s campaign has urged voters to not “be fooled” by what it calls Trump’s attempts to disguise his immigration policies.

“Donald Trump will be who he has always been: Donald Trump,” the campaign said in an email Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, the State Department says about 30 emails involving the 2012 attack on US compounds in Benghazi, Libya, are among the thousands of Hillary Clinton emails recovered during the FBI’s recently closed investigation into her use of a private server.

Government lawyers told US District Court Judge Amit Mehta on Tuesday that an undetermined number of the emails among the 30 were not included in the 55 000 pages previously provided by Clinton to the State Department.

The agency said it would need until the end of September to review the emails and redact potentially classified information before they are released.

The hearing was held in one of several lawsuits filed by the conservative legal group Judicial Watch, which has sued over access to government records involving the Democratic presidential nominee.

The State Department has said the FBI provided it with about 14 900 emails purported not to have been among those previously released. Clinton previously had said she withheld and deleted only personal emails not related to her duties as secretary of state.— AFP