EL PASO — This tranquil city of bilingual trans-border commerce is where lurid fantasy meets humdrum reality. President Trump will come here Monday, risking life and limb at “our very dangerous southern border,” that “lawless” frontier facing a “tremendous onslaught.” I can reassure the president: He will be able to gaze at Mexico without breaking a sweat or putting his hairdo at risk.

Trump will attribute the calm to fencing completed a decade ago and recently extended with what looks like junkyard metal. In his State of the Union address, he claimed the barrier transformed El Paso from “one of our nation’s most dangerous cities” into “one of our safest cities.” This was a lie.

It incensed the mayor, Dee Margo, who tweeted: “El Paso was never one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S.” It incensed Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat, who accused the president in a tweet of spreading “falsehoods.” For a city of its size, El Paso has eased from pretty safe to super safe as its violent crime rate has dropped since the mid-1990s. The city’s story is not a fence story.

Margo, in an interview, said: “I hope we have some adult behavior. Egos are overriding common sense and I think it’s ridiculous.” Escobar told me: “Trump’s wall obsession is his way of keeping a campaign promise to the core of his base, many of whom are xenophobic and some outright racist.”