El Paso, Texas, Mayor Dee Margo (R) said Saturday that he would “absolutely” correct President Trump if he repeats a false line about crime in the border city during a campaign rally.
Margo said on CNN’s “SE Cupp Unfiltered” that he’s been unafraid to call out Trump over the comments he made about El Paso last week during the State of the Union address.
“I’ve been stating it publicly since last Tuesday night,” Margo said, adding that the “the fence” along the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso “serves a useful purpose, but that “it’s not the total panacea.”
“It can’t be,” he said.
His comments came just days after Trump in his State of the Union address used the border city as an example for why walls reduced crime.
“[El Paso] used to have extremely high rates of violent crime, one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities,” Trump said. “Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities,” he said.
Margo condemned Trump’s comments shortly after the speech, tweeting that “El Paso was never one of the most dangerous cities in the US.”
“We’ve had a fence for 10 years and it has impacted illegal immigration and curbed criminal activity,” Margo wrote. “It is NOT the sole deterrent. Law enforcement in our community continues to keep us safe.”
He said Saturday that he believes Trump may have been given misinformation from the Texas attorney general about crime statistics during his previous trip to McAllen, Texas.
El Paso sits just across the border from the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez and is divided by the Rio Grande and a stretch of fence that was constructed more than 10 years ago.
Margo said that the “geography of Texas won’t allow a fence from El Paso to Brownsville, Texas, even if you wanted to do it.”
“So it’s got to be part and parcel to technology and manpower,” he added.
Trump has repeatedly demanded a wall along the southern border since his 2016 presidential campaign. His insistence to build one helped spark a government shutdown that lasted 35 days.
He is set to travel to El Paso on Monday in what will mark his first rally of the 2020 campaign cycle.