No, Sarah Sanders, El Paso Not Safest “Because of the Wall”

The link in Sarah’s tweet is to an NY Post Op-ed in which Paul Sperry writes that prior to the construction of the border fence, El Paso was “mired in violent crime and drug smuggling”.

This assertion would be laughable if it weren’t so slanderous. Also, like many of the proclamations out of the Trump White House, it’s way too easy to disprove.

The construction of a border fence in El Paso began in 2006 and was completed in 2010. Sperry claims in his NY Post piece that El Paso was a hotbed of violent crime “before 2010”.

Why, then, does this document from the Justice Policy Institute from 2005 list El Paso, Texas as the SECOND SAFEST large city in America?

And this one from 2003 (three years before the border fence was even started) has El Paso ranked as 4th safest.

It’s frustrating, really. For many years politicians, including our own governor, wrongly described El Paso as a city beset by crippling violence. Now, when finally giving EP props for being a safe city, they give the credit exactly where it doesn’t belong: to the border fence. “ El Paso? It must be violent because there are so many Mexicans there”. Flash Forward to today: “El Paso? It’s so safe because they have a wall to keep all the Mexicans out”. You just can’t win with these types.

Once again, I’ll have to lower my expectations for this administration. How can you blame Sarah Sanders for being clueless about El Paso when our own governor used to talk about non-existent car bombs going off in downtown.

Thank God he’s only in charge of the environment now.