Gov. Doug Ducey to speak prior to Donald Trump immigration speech in Phoenix

PHOENIX — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey will speak before Donald Trump’s immigration policy address in Phoenix, it was confirmed Tuesday.

Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said the governor will be at the event and will provide some “welcoming remarks.”

Trump’s campaign website says the event will begin at 6 p.m. at the Phoenix Convention Center. The doors open at 3 p.m. and tickets are available online. It will be the first time Ducey has appeared on stage with Trump.

The appearance is a big step toward a call for unity that Ducey issued during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.

“Let’s clearly state our purpose this morning: It is to put a Republican back in the White House and a Republican vice president back in Washington, D.C. and those Republicans are Donald Trump and Mike Pence,” he said at the time.

He said the party must unify to keep Arizona in Republican control during the upcoming election, but has yet to appear alongside the party’s presidential candidate at a rally in his state.

Trump’s upcoming speech was the source of much confusion over the past few days.

After confirming the event last week, his campaign canceled the event just 48 hours later. However, the billionaire took to Twitter to set the record straight a few hours later and then said he planned to speak about his immigration plan.

Trumps’ immigration plan has been in the news in recent weeks, and it’s assumed that he will provide more detailed information regarding his plan.

After initially taking a hard-line stance against illegal immigration, Trump appeared to back down this week, promising to be “fair, but firm” toward the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally.

The billionaire businessman, whose hard-line approach to immigration and fierce rhetoric propelled him to the GOP presidential nomination, insisted that he’s not “flip-flopping” on the divisive issue as he works to broaden his support two-and-a-half months before the general election.

The speech will be the second time his campaign visits Arizona during August. Pence hosted a town hall at the Phoenix Convention Center on Aug. 2.

The upcoming speech will be Trump’s fifth visit to the Valley since launching his campaign last year. The events have drawn large crowds of both supporters and protesters.

He used a December event in Mesa to call for a halt to illegal immigration. Trump said, if the illegal immigration process is not halted, Americans will lose the country.

“If we don’t stop [illegal immigration], we don’t have a country,” he told a crowd of thousands inside an airport hangar at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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