This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, March 9th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Popular notions about the U.S. Mexico border are in some cases flat out wrong.

So says Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke.

He says his city, El Paso, Texas, is among the safest in the U.S.

We discussed the border and the war on drugs last week.

Last year you ran a race on the border. What was the goal? I think the goal was to bring more attention and focus and people, literally, to the border to see it for themselves. The border's been characterized in any number of

ways, mostly negative as a source of anxiety, of fear. Some presidential candidates have called it the point at which Mexican

rapists cross into the United States to actually come and be in El Paso and in this 10-K race that started in downtown El Paso, ran through our community,

crossed one of the international bridges into Cilah Juarez, Mexico, and went through that community and then finished on the international line

was to see the world's largest functioning bi-national community, 3 million people living

for the most part in harmony economically

familially culturally historically interconnected unlike any two people

anywhere else and at least on the US side Paso, the safest large city in the United States, the

safest city with a population over 500,000 in the country. Really, very much a magical place that doesn't exist anywhere else.

And we had about a thousand participants, many of them from other parts of the United States

in Mexico and some of them the first time

that they were seeing the border including journalists. So our desire was

for the story of the border to be told accurately based on someone's

physical presence there seeing it for themselves.

And I think when the story is told that way, it's largely positive and a reflection of what I see every day in that community.

Now you make this point a lot that Juarez and El Paso are the same community.

...