I heard that traveling to Mexico via border towns like Juarez and TJ is extremely dangerous. Is this true?

I live in Juarez, it's not that dangerous, just don't be out late, Mexico city is more dangerous, this is experience talking...

most boarder towns are not really safe , think of them as port towns

Best not to hang out in the border towns...they are dirty and ugly anyway...just drive right through and get on your way. The rest of Mexico is very different than the border towns.

Stop already. Border towns are busy, dusty, insane traffic and there are incidences of crime...but no more than other big cities of the world. There are no roadside bombs.

Yes I go to Mexico many times a year and have done this since I was 3. Our passage of choice is Reynosa and we have never had any problems though it has tons of traffic. Just be cautious which ever way.

The two you mention and Nuevo Laredo are probably the worst. But there are border towns that are not so bad--small places that haven't attracted the drug dealers like Palomas, Mexico, not far from Columbus, N.M.:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/tra...

I've never had any problems in Matamoros or Reynosa, but I've never been drunk their either. I'm sure a small percentage of Mexicans would see a drunk gringo on an empty street and say to himself "God has sent me a rich, drunk gringo. Surely he wants to the remove his worldly money." I'd say that the majority of the crimes in Mexico are NOT violent, but are crimes of opportunity. Leave your camera hung on the back of your chair in a restaurant, and you're asking someone to lift it--but this happens in the states too.
Review the chart of Crime Rates in Mexico per 100,000 inhabitants on this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Me...

and you'll that most crime is lower in Mexico than in the USA. But I think if we just compared the three bad border towns we've been discussing, the rate would exceed the Mexican averages.