Fired-up Trump takes his wall message to the border with plan for rally in El Paso revealed hours after State of the Union speech – putting him right on Democratic star Beto O’Rourke’s doorstep
President Donald Trump will take his border wall call on the road to El Paso, a city that is nestled up to Mexico
It’s his first rally since the start of the government shutdown and his only announced stop on a post-State of the Union run
El Paso is also the hometown of one of Trump’s potential 2020 rivals, former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke.
O’Rourke acknowledged this week that he’s considering a presidential bid
By FRANCESCA CHAMBERS
DAILYMAIL.COM
6 February 2019
President Donald Trump will take his border wall call on the road to El Paso, a city that is nestled up to Mexico, next week.
El Paso is also the hometown of one of Trump’s potential 2020 rivals, former Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke.
O’Rourke acknowledged this week that he’s considering a bid for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. He’d join one of the largest classes of contenders the party has ever seen if he follows through.
El Paso is separated from the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez by the Rio Grande.
Trump name-checked the city on Tuesday evening during his State of the Union address as he pressed for a border barrier.
‘The border city of El Paso, Texas, 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, immediately upon its building, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities.’
He said: ‘Simply put, walls work and walls save lives.’
El Paso Sheriff Richard Wiles immediately accused Trump of promoting ‘falsehoods’ in order to ‘justify the building of a 2,000 mile wall.’
The law enforcement officer who identifies as a Democrat told NBC News, ‘The facts are clear. While it is true that El Paso is one of the safest cities in the nation, it has never been … considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities.
‘And, El Paso was a safe city long before any wall was built. President Trump continues to give a false narrative about a great city that truly represents what this great nation is all about,’ he charged.
El Paso’s crime rate was already dropping when the barrier that Trump referred to went up as part of the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Crime was at its peak in 1993, and it fell almost every year until 2007, when it began to creep back up.
FBI crime data shows that the number of incidents increased during construction of the wall, 2008, and in the year after, 2009, according to the El Paso Times.
The rate of violent crime for those years and the years since is far lower than it was at anytime between 1986 and 2004.
O’Rourke was a member of the city council in El Paso from 2005 to 2011.
Trump’s claim that the wall ‘immediately’ cut down on violence is not true, the crime statistics show. Violent crime was less of a problem in the two years prior to the wall’s construction than after it went up.
Not one to back down from a fight, Trump will travel to Texas next week on Monday to make his point.
Members of Congress face a Friday deadline to agree on a proposal to fund areas of the federal government and satiate Trump’s desire for a border structure.
Trump pushed a bipartisan message at his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, but his immigration remarks drew audible groans from Democratic lawmakers.
He declared that ‘tolerance for illegal immigration is not compassionate, it is actually very cruel’ and proposed a ‘physical barrier or wall’ as a ‘commonsense’ solution to the problem.
‘But the proper wall never got built. I will get it built,’ he said of past efforts to fund a border barrier.
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