When Donald Trump went to El Paso yesterday to demand funding for The Wall he did not just have to deal with pro-immigrant demonstrators led by Beto O’Rourke, he was also challenged by the city’s Republican mayor, Dee Margo. The border city mayor says that Trump has mischaracterized the relationship between crime and immigration in El Paso.
Trump claimed in the State of the Union address that El Paso was one of the most dangerous cities in America before border fencing was erected there. After the speech before Congress, the Texas mayor tweeted out that El Paso had not been a high-crime city even before the fencing went up.
Ron Martin, head of the El Paso Municipal Police Officers Association, also contradicted Trump saying that; “He painted El Paso in the past like it was some lawless, overrun, violent city and he made a comment that we were one of the highest violent crime rates in the nation and that’s just not true. It upset me, because he made it appear like if it wasn’t for the wall, El Paso would be some desolate little community overrun by criminals.”
FBI statistics show that El Paso has had consistently low crime rates since 1993. In fact, the most dangerous place in El Paso last night may have been Trump’s rally where a BBC cameraman was attacked by a Trump supporter.
