This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

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 couldn’t 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.

Although Trump’s border wall, the construction of which has now begun after the Pentagon allowed the shifting of $3.6bn in military funds to finance it, still doesn’t feature moats filled with reptiles or spikes, his administration has found other ways to keep migrants and refugees away.

Trump has nearly destroyed US refugee program, experts say Read more

In a federal court hearing on Tuesday, immigration advocates asked judges to block a key immigration policy that forces asylum seekers to await their court hearings in Mexico, where they are not safe and lack access to lawyers.

In a report released Tuesday, the advocacy group Human Rights First said that there have been more than 340 public reports of rape, kidnapping, torture and other violent crimes against asylum seekers returned to Mexico under the new Trump policy.

Last week, the administration announced that it would set the cap for refugee admissions at an all-time low.

The supreme court also ruled to allow the Trump administration deny asylum to anyone who passes through another country on their way to the US, blocking most Central American migrants fleeing violence and poverty who arrive at the southern border.

In a dissenting opinion, justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotomayor said that the policy “affects some of the most vulnerable people in the western hemisphere”.