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As President Trump has tried to sell the need for his border wall to the American public over the past month, he has painted a dark picture of life on the US-Mexico border. nbcnews.to/2E6oDXj (1/8)
In Trump's State of the Union address last Tuesday he called El Paso, Texas, “one of our nation’s most dangerous cities” — that is, he said, before it erected a new border fencing. (2/8)
“While there are problem areas along the US-Mexico border, the problem [Trump] has described is grossly distorted from reality,” says Michael Blum, a local business and community leader in McAllen, Texas. (3/8)
In El Paso — a city with a population of 700,000 — violent crime has been cut in half since the 1990s, and the most up-to-date crime rate there was fewer than 400 incidents per 100,000 people. That’s less than NYC’s rate of nearly 600 violent crimes per 100,000 residents. (4/8) 
“El Paso was NEVER one of the MOST dangerous cities in the US,” El Paso's mayor, a Republican, tweeted after Trump’s State of the Union. “We‘ve had a fence for 10 years and it has impacted illegal immigration and curbed criminal activity. It is NOT the sole deterrent.” (5/8)
The number of undocumented immigrants apprehended at the border has also declined in both cities. Apprehensions in El Paso have plummeted from nearly 120,000 in 2000 to 25,000 in 2017, according to US Border Patrol statistics. nbcnews.to/2E6oDXj (6/8)
And while apprehensions spiked in McAllen in 2014, due in large part to unaccompanied minors from Central America, they’ve been on the decline since then. nbcnews.to/2E6oDXj (7/8)
Ahead of the president’s visit to El Paso on Monday, Rep. Veronica Escobar wrote President Trump a letter asking him to apologize for his portrayal of the city in his State of the Union address. nbcnews.to/2E6oDXj (8/8) #NBCNewsThreads
