Donald Trump wanted moats with snakes and alligators at border and migrants shot in legs, reports say
- New book details how Trump’s ‘zeal to stop immigration had sent him lurching for solutions, one more extreme than the next’
- Trump eventually backed away from his most extreme suggestions but also reportedly fired advisers who pushed back against his ideas
US President Donald Trump discussed shooting migrants in the legs to slow them down, after ordering advisers to shut down the entire US-Mexico border, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
The president also suggested electrifying the border wall and fortifying it with spikes, and deterring migrants with a moat stocked with snakes or alligators, according to the Times, which excerpted the upcoming book Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration.
Based on interviews with dozens of officials within the White House and the administration, Times reporters Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis recount “a frenzied week of presidential rages” in March, during which Trump’s “zeal to stop immigration had sent him lurching for solutions, one more extreme than the next”.
The revelations in the Times report are in line with the president’s public attitude toward migrants arriving at the southern border. Last year, he publicly suggested that soldiers shoot migrants who throw rocks at them.
Although Trump eventually backed away from his most extreme suggestions, he also reportedly fired aides and advisers who pushed back against his ideas.
The story recounts an especially tense relationship between Trump and homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who often found herself in the position of telling the president why he could not break laws and international norms willy-nilly.
Nielsen was eventually dismissed, at the urging of the White House aide Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, who reportedly told Trump that many of his officials were wrong to cite the legal hurdles to enacting the president’s proposals.
