MCALLEN, Texas – People and businesses across this border city reflected the national debate raging over President Donald Trump's border wall during his visit Thursday.

Protesters favoring the wall and those opposed to new barriers took to the streets as residents insisted there was no crisis.

Across the street from U.S. Customs and Border Protection's McAllen Station, which Trump is scheduled to tour, demonstrators lined the sidewalk.

Anti-Trump protesters inflated a Trump-baby blimp, while the president’s supporters chanted, “Build that Wall!”

Eddie Zamora waved a large blue “TRUMP” flag as the Trump-baby blimp floated behind him. He said he supported a wall to secure his community.

“I guarantee everybody out here locks their doors at night,” he said.

At the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley Humanitarian Respite Center, which helps immigrants released from federal custody, families arranged bus tickets for relatives in the USA as children rummaged through bins of donated toys and volunteers handed out oranges. Sister Norma Pimentel, who runs the center, said about 100 migrants were there, down from a daily average of 300 to 500 in December – a high average for December but lower than previous years.

Pimentel said she doesn’t see the criminal migrants Trump warned about in his Oval Office speech Tuesday night and is confident Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement officials keep those criminals from entering the country. The migrants she sees on a daily basis are mostly families fleeing violence in their own countries and seeking a better life in the USA, she said.

Pimentel said she hopes Trump gets a fuller picture of the border situation from his visit.

"I’m hopeful he'll better understand the whole reality," Pimentel said. "I don’t know if he's open to that, but I hope he is."

She smiled and added, "He's always welcomed here."

Trump has claimed a security and humanitarian crisis to try to justify his demand for $5.7 billion to extend the border wall, which has driven Washington to a partial government shutdown that has dragged on for nearly three weeks. The president walked out of a White House meeting with congressional Democrats Wednesday.

He tweeted Thursday morning that he gets "great support" for his border wall stance, though opinion polls show otherwise: A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 35 percent of U.S. adults support a spending bill that includes funding for the wall, and 25 percent support Trump’s shutdown.

Early Thursday afternoon, Trump landed in McAllen. On his visit here and to a portion of the Rio Grande, which forms much of the border between the USA and Mexico, he is scheduled to receive briefings at each stop from Border Patrol agents.

McAllen is one of the largest cities along the U.S.-Mexican border, where 140,000 people live directly across the Rio Grande from the Mexican city of Reynosa, where 670,000 people live. Thousands of people cross the border each day, forming a long-standing, binational community where residents are dependent on goods and services on both sides of the border.

McAllen Mayor Jim Darling said the impression that the region is under siege is wrong, and the area saw far higher numbers of migrants coming across in 2014 than it has in recent months.

"To me, the real crisis is that the government has not gotten together to get the real issues resolved," Darling said.

Melton Castro, 23, of Honduras, said he was aware of the rhetoric from the White House and new policies aimed at deterring immigration. That didn’t stop him from paying a smuggler $7,000 and making the 28-day journey to the USA with his 2-year-old son, Luis.

Castro said he received death threats from criminal gangs in his home country and several of his colleagues were kidnapped or killed.

"We're not criminals," he said. "We come here to work, to make a better life for our sons and families."

The marquee at the Cine El Rey, a 1940s-era theater-turned-music-venue in downtown McAllen, usually heralds upcoming rock bands or events. This week, it read, "WELCOME TO MCALLEN, 7TH SAFEST CITY IN AMERICA."

The message comes from a ranking in 2015 by smartasset.com and was put up to generate discussion about Trump’s visit, co-owner Bert Guerra said.

Guerra said he generally wants to see the president succeed, but Trump's decision to come to McAllen, a statistically safe city, to tout a perceived crisis of criminals and drugs spilling over the border is a mistake. The focus should be placed on helping Americans and immigrants live together and succeed, not dividing the two, he said.

"That’s what really makes America great: caring for people who are not Americans," Guerra said. "We lose that, we lose our core values."

More than 100 Trump supporters gathered on a street corner in McAllen on Thursday to voice their support of the president and his plans to build a wall along the southern border.

They chanted, "Donald Trump!" and "Build the wall!" or posed next to a life-size cutout of the president.

Tony Torres, 50, said a lot of people in McAllen support Trump and his policies but are often afraid to speak out in the heavily Latino and Democratic city.

"We need border security," Torres said, holding a "Latinos for Trump" sign. "We have a lot of illegals coming over the border, a lot of drugs coming over. And it needs to stop."

A few yards away from the Trump supporters on the same street corner, a group of anti-Trump protesters waved signs denouncing the wall and chanted, "Down with Trump!"

Blanca Silva, 68, a retired school teacher, said she was offended that the president would visit her city after the harsh rhetoric he’s often used toward immigrants.

"How dare he come to our valley, when he doesn’t like our people?" she said.

She said a wall is unnecessary and would be a huge waste of money.

"I've lived here all my life, and I've never had a problem," Silva said. "There's no crisis here of any kind."

Contributing: Alan Gomez, USA TODAY; Beatriz Alvarado of the Corpus Christi Caller Times.