In January of this year, Donald Trump's efforts to get some kind of immigration deal through Congress resulted in the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. It also failed to get Trump the deal that he wanted because, apparently, he couldn't explain to either Congressional Democrats or Republicans what exactly he wanted. That's obviously a problem for someone who made immigration reduction in general, and xenophobia in particular, a central part of his presidential campaign. So by March, Trump and his staff were back at the drawing board to figure out what to do next.

That's when, to their shock, Trump ordered his advisers to close the U.S.-Mexico border, not allowing anyone to pass through for any reason, a decision that would essentially strand tourists in either country and cripple commerce. But that, apparently, wasn't even one of Trump's more absurd ideas for strengthening border security. According to the New York Times, his aides and advisers knew that he'd been careening between extreme solutions that ranged from Bond villain-esque to outright violent. Per the Times:

Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.

While shooting immigrants in for rock-throwing may be illegal, there have been multiple cases of Border Patrol agents firing into Mexico from the U.S. side of the border and killing Mexican teenagers for doing just that, and so far the cases that have gone to court have ended in acquittals.

Since January, Trump seems to have abandoned his ideas for snake- and alligator-filled moats and opening fire on people for crossing the border, but he doesn't need to reach for such overtly violent methods to brutalize and turn away all kinds of immigrants, documented or otherwise. There are, of course, the over-crowded and deadly detention camps for migrants. And just last month the White House announced that it was cutting the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. next year to just 18,000, a 40 percent drop from the already-record low quota for the year before. That's the lowest number of refugees the U.S. has accepted since Congress established the modern refugee program in 1980.

Even without the moats, there's been no shortage of absurd border-enforcement ideas from Trump, many of them seemingly unmoored from reality. He recently declared that a team of top professional rock climbers found the completed sections of border wall "can't be climbed." The Daily Beast hasn't found a single climber who has tested the wall or who knows anyone who has, though several gave comments similar to those of Maya Madere, a top woman boulderer, who said, "Trump is full of shit as usual." He's also demanded that the wall be painted black, claiming that it makes the unclimbable wall even harder to climb. The extra cost for painting may run as high as $133 million for just the 175 miles of already constructed wall. The U.S.-Mexico border is more than 1,900 miles long.