Hours before Donald Trump’s big wall-themed campaign rally in El Paso, Texas, the El Paso county commission passed a resolution calling out Trump’s lies about the city and calling his family separation policy “immoral.”
In the “whereas”-riddled language of such resolutions, the commissioners and county judge point out that, in general, Trump and his administration have “disseminated false information to local elected officials across the nation regarding its perceived need for border security funding priorities, including calling life on the U.S.-Mexico border a ‘crisis situation,’” but that “data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) illustrates that no such crisis exists.”
Turning to El Paso specifically, they write that Trump “falsely stated that El Paso was one of the most dangerous cities in the United States until the construction of border fencing, yet another lie that was quickly disputed by residents and members of our local law enforcement agencies. El Paso’s violent crime rate dropped 62 percent from its peak in 1993 to 2007, a year before construction on the fence began.”
As Trump heads to their city, the commissioners write that they are “disillusioned by President Trump’s lies regarding the border and our community, and though it is difficult to welcome him to El Paso while he continues to proliferate such untruths, we do welcome him to meet with local officials to become properly informed about our great and safe region.”
Unfortunately, Trump is certain to take this not as an opportunity to become better informed but as another opportunity to ignore and reject reality.