Trump Wanted To “Shoot Down” Migrants, Give Border Wall An Alligator-Filled Moat

Mod: This Trump is one very strange dude. You already knew that, right?

Trump Wanted To “Shoot Down” Migrants, Give Border Wall An Alligator-Filled Moat (Vanity Fair link): President Donald Trump has made no secret of his plan to stop the influx of migrants through the U.S.-Mexico border, whether by restricting asylum admissions, weaponizing tariffs, and, of course, building his “big, beautiful” border wall no matter what laws stand in his way. In March, the president even publicly threatened to completely shut down the U.S.-Mexico border, economic consequences be damned.

While the total border shutdown didn't come to pass, the New York Times reported Tuesday that Trump's serious desire to see it happen resulted in “far more White House turmoil than was known at the time”—and it's far from the only damaging border solution the president's dreamed up.

Per the Times's excerpt of Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear's forthcoming book Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration, the president's shutdown idea was one of several he's had about how to keep immigrants off the U.S. Mexico border.

Other suggestions the president has privately floated: Fortifying the border wall with electric spikes “that could pierce human flesh” and “a water-filled trench,” which would naturally be “stocked with snakes or alligators.” 

Trump has also suggested shooting migrants who throw rocks at immigration officials and “shoot[ing] migrants in the legs to slow them down,” only to be told that committing violence against migrants at-will is, in fact, illegal. (Though White House aides did reportedly “seek a cost estimate” for the alligator-filled moat.)

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