New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, in a blunt, impassioned moment at Sunday’s CNN town hall, said Americans who believe immigrants are to blame for their economic insecurity are wrong.

“They have a lot of debt, there’s a lot of problems in their lives. They’re frustrated. They’ve been told for years and years the immigrants did it to them,” de Blasio said. “I want to be blunt about it: The immigrants didn’t do that to you.”

De Blasio said it was important to “recognize that there’s many, many people in this country who happen to be American citizens, many of them happen to be white, who they, themselves, are legitimately struggling, their American dream’s not working out, they’re economically challenged.”

But the mayor said that politicians who have sought to convince these voters that immigrants are to blame for their issues, like President Donald Trump, are lying.

“Wall Street did that to you. The big corporations did that to you. The guy in the kitchen or the guy in the fields didn’t have the power to do that to you,” de Blasio said. “Only those who had the power and the wealth could create an economy so unfair to working people and middle-class people.”

He added: “Once we unmask that truth, and I think we should all speak that truth with energy, then we can answer the rest of the equation.”