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In an effort to slow migrants down, Trump allegedly told some of his White House staff that it was time Border Patrol started shooting migrants in the legs.
A new book that was written about Trump’s obsession with the border, Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D Shear, details the incident.
Earlier this year, Trump publicly claimed that Border Patrol agents should shoot at any migrants who threw rocks at them. He was chastised by his aides, however, as this was illegal and very bad optics.
He then privately urged Border Patrol members to simply stop any migrants from crossing the border.
During the 2016 election, Trump ran on a platform primarily aimed at the concept of immigrants from Mexico “taking American jobs.” Trump loudly proclaimed how he would shut down all “illegal immigration” in his campaign speeches, though as president he has mostly railed against the legal asylum process.
The president’s obsession with the border has led him to make some rather risky moves, politically. Earlier this year, he briefly considered the idea of simply shutting the border down altogether. While completely unlikely from a logistical standpoint, this would be in line with Trump’s “all-or-nothing” attitude, seen in his Muslim travel bans and military trans ban.
Clearly Trump didn’t go ahead with a plan to shut down the border altogether. Did cooler heads prevail and manage to convince him to calm down? According to Border Wars, that’s not exactly how it went down. The book details how Kirstjen Nielson, then the secretary of homeland security, caught a lot of the flak from Trump over the border situation.
At one point, Trump demanded that the border wall be made from concrete. However, the contracts for a steel barrier were already drafted and ready, and the likelihood of constructing concrete barriers at that point in the process was slim to none. As such, Nielson told Trump that she didn’t think that it would even be possible to do that. She was then asked to resign, which she did a few days later.
Following Nielsen’s ouster, Trump added even more immigration hard-liners to his top staff. While he backed off on the more murderous plans, the administration doubled down on detention centers, denying asylum applications and generally making life difficult for anyone trying to enter the US.
