Is It Safe For Donald Trump To Visit Mexico? Unpopular Among Mexicans, Republican Heads South Amid Soaring Crime

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump plans to visit Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico Wednesday hours before giving a speech in Arizona where he is expected to blast illegal immigration. Peña Nieto said the meeting would help "protect Mexicans wherever they are."

But what about Trump's security? While the Secret Service is tasked with protecting the White House hopeful, Trump's divisive rhetoric against Mexicans during his campaign have made him an unpopular figure in Mexico at a time when crime is soaring. The hashtag #YouAreNotWelcome and, in Spanish, #NoEreesBienvenidoTrump, started trending soon after the news of his visit, BBC News reported.

Margarita Zavala, the presidential candidate for the opposition Pan party, warned Trump he wouldn't receive a warm embrace. "Even though you have been invited, you should know you're not welcome," she said. "Mexicans have dignity and reject your hateful discourse."

Peña Nieto has also had harsh words for Trump in the past. He described Trump's "strident rhetoric" in March: "That's how Mussolini got in, that's how Hitler got in, they took advantage of a situation, a problem perhaps, which humanity was going through at the time, after an economic crisis."

When Trump introduced his candidacy in 2015 by calling Mexicans rapists and drug dealers, some artists in Mexico responded by creating piñata in his likeness for people to take their anger out on.

"From the moment Mr. Trump began his campaign calling Mexicans rapists and criminals; they didn't take too kindly to that," Shannon O'Neil, senior fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNBC in June.

Trump has since vowed to deport all undocumented Mexicans from the U.S., build a wall along the border and make the Mexican government pay for the wall.

Meanwhile, violent crimes are on the rise in Mexico. Peña Nieto fired the commissioner of the country’s federal police force Monday amid reports that he had killed at least 22 suspects in a drug raid.

Mexico's homicide rate reached 2,073 killings in July, the most of any month since Peña Nieto took office in December 2012.

A rumor last year that Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman had offered a $100 million bounty on Trump's head ended up being a fake entertainment story, but a Twitter account reportedly run by the drug lord's son Ivan did warn last year that Trump would "swallow his words."