Washington (CNN) El Paso, Texas, Mayor Dee Margo said hours before President Donald Trump is due to visit his city that Trump was wrong to claim a border barrier was responsible for El Paso's drop in crime.

Trump made the claim last week in his State of the Union Address when he said El Paso "used to have extremely high rates of violent crime -- one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation's most dangerous cities."

"Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities," Trump said.

CNN noted at the time that the connection was inaccurate, and Margo, a Republican, told CNN's Poppy Harlow and Jim Sciutto on "Newsroom" Monday that the drop in crime came prior to the barrier construction, and that Trump was "wrong" when he claimed otherwise.

El Paso is a Texas border city adjacent to Mexico's Ciudad Juarez. Margo said while Trump was right to call El Paso safe, he was wrong to attribute its drop in crime to the construction of a barrier along the border -- a remark he said Trump had echoed from Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Read More