President Donald Trump said in a speech on Thursday that rocks thrown by migrants on the US–Mexico border should be considered as firearms. By Friday, the Nigerian army had already used a video of the speech to justify shooting protesters that a human rights group said were unarmed.



Trump made the comments in a White House speech on immigration, as thousands of troops were deployed to the southern border. Much of the speech focused on the migrant caravan that has been a focus of Trump’s in the run-up to the midterm elections.

“We’re not going to put up with that. If they want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back,” he said. “We’re going to consider — and I told them, consider it a rifle.”



On Friday, the official Twitter account of the Nigerian army tweeted a video of the comments, along with the words “please watch and make your deductions.”

