Democrats this week, including incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have insisted President Trump's planned border wall is a waste of money.

But the former mayor of a southern Israeli city says that when his country erected a high-tech wall on its southern border, illegal immigration was cut to zero.

Between 2010 and 2012, some 55,000 illegal immigrants entered Israel, pointed out David Rubin, the former mayor of Shiloh, in an interview Wednesday night with Fox News' Tucker Carlson.

Most of the illegal immigrants settled in southern Tel Aviv, he said, "which was already a run-down, working class area."

"The rapes and murders in southern Tel Aviv skyrocketed in those few years," said Rubin.

The Israeli government, under pressure from residents "who were being overrun," decided to build a high-tech steel wall on the southern border between Egypt and Israel.

It was completed 2016, and that year only 11 illegal immigrants entered Israel, noted the former mayor.

"And then they raised the height of the wall, an additional several feet," Rubin said. "And then in 2017 there was not one illegal immigrant that made it through the southern border into Israel.

"It works," he said.

Rubin acknowledged that, similar to political opposition in the United States, some on the left in Israel condemned the wall as racist.

"Look, illegal immigration is illegal immigration," Rubin commented.

"The fact is, now, nobody is complaining. Everybody is happy we don't have illegal immigration to Israel."

Trump: 'You could ask Israel about walls that work'

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen visited Israel's border fence in June.

"Border security is national security. Our Israeli partners know that better than anyone, and I was fortunate today to see the incredible work they're doing to keep their territory and citizens safe," Nielsen later told a homeland security conference in Jerusalem, according to Reuters.

The 143-mile wall is between 15 feet to 24 feet tall. Israel is also constructing a 21-mile-long, 20-foot-high fence along its border with Jordan near the southern city of Eilat to protect its new international airport.

Trump noted Israel's border walls during his 2016 presidential campaign.

"You could ask Israel about walls that work. Believe me, walls work," he said.