For the past 20 years, a number of published ratings have listed El Paso as one of the nation’s safest cities, and FBI statistics show that, like most major U.S. cities, El Paso’s crime rate has been dropping since the mid-1990s.

The city’s rate of violent crime reached its peak in 1993, when more than 6,500 violent crimes were recorded, and that number fell by more than 34 percent over the next 13 years, according to an analysis of crime data by the El Paso Times. From two years before the fencing was built, in 2006, to two years after, in 2011, the violent crime rate increased by 17 percent, the newspaper reported.

By contrast, Ciudad Juárez, El Paso’s Mexican sister city just across the border, has at times been one of the deadliest cities in the world and saw an increase in crime last year. There were 543 murders in Juárez in 2016, 773 in 2017 and more than 1,100 last year, according to a tally kept by local media.

There is no dispute that the border fencing has cut down the number of illegal border crossings into El Paso, but local leaders said it is false to suggest the barrier had an impact on violent crime.