To stop illegal immigrants: Trump suggests filling moats with alligators, snakes on Mexico border

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump proposed border officials "shoot migrants in the legs" and build a moat filled with alligators to stop migrants crossing the US-Mexico border, according to international media reports.

The US president also wanted his new border wall, a key 2016 campaign promise, to be electrified "with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh", according to officials present for the discussion in March.

According to reports, Trump became increasingly frustrated with the legal and political hurdles to his hard line approach to reducing the tide of migrants attempting to enter the US.

“The president was frustrated and I think he took that moment to hit the reset button,” Thomas Homan, Trump’s former Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief, said of the meeting. “The president wanted it to be fixed quickly.”

Trump initially proposed closing the entire 2,000 mile southern border but in a two-hour meeting in the Oval Office proposed far more extreme measures. Trump had already publicly suggested that US soldiers could open fire on migrants approaching America if they threw rocks. When his staff told him that was illegal, Trump suggested in the March meeting that they could instead shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down.

Although Trump eventually was talked out of his most radical ideas, he also reportedly fired key immigration officials who pushed back against his suggestions.

Trump has dismissed the claims in the reports, tweeting on Wednesday: "Now the press is trying to sell the fact that I wanted a moat stuffed with alligators and snakes, with an electrified fence and sharp spikes on top, at our Southern border. I may be tough on border security, but not that tough. The press has gone crazy. Fake News!

Meanwhile, as Congress escalates its impeachment probe into the Ukraine scandal engulfing his presidency, President Donald Trump was facing the White House press corps Wednesday on an investigation he has branded a "coup."

The power struggle between Trump, who is accused of leaning on Ukraine´s president to dig up dirt on one of his main 2020 election rivals, and congressional Democrats appears to be entering ever more volatile territory. Trump has gone all out in his resistance, using language that would once have been inconceivable for a president, including his claim late Tuesday on Twitter that this is "not an impeachment, it is a COUP."

It is "intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms," Trump said. After keeping pronouncements mostly to Twitter over the last week, Trump was due to give a press conference alongside visiting Finnish President Sauli Niinisto.

Trump is accused of having pressured Zelensky to help him by opening a corruption investigation against leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in a July 25 phone call. He is alleged to have suggested that military equipment Ukraine sought to beef up its defences against Russia would be contingent on him getting that favour. A whistleblower, so far only identified as someone from the intelligence services, went to the authorities with concerns about the phone call, triggering the impeachment inquiry.

Trump has likened the whistleblower to a spy and called for his or her identity to be made public, although by law whistleblowers are protected. He has suggested that the lead congressional investigator overseeing the impeachment inquiry, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, should be arrested for "treason." Trump has also retweeted a warning that his removal from office could trigger "civil war."

But Schiff and other Democrats in the lower house are pushing aggressively forward, with closed-doors hearings starting this week. The State Department was due to brief congressional committees Wednesday on what it said were documents "related to the State Department and Ukraine."

It was not clear what that would entail, but the State Department is closely caught up in the probe, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirming Wednesday previous reports that he listened in during the Zelensky call. Earlier, Pompeo accused Democrats of trying to "intimidate" and "bully" State Department employees. Democrats said he was "stonewalling" their investigation.