Trump Admin Officials Suggested Using ‘Heat Ray’ Weapon That Makes Skin Feel Like It’s Burning to Repel Migrants: NYT

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The New York Times has new reporting on one suggested that was briefly floated — but apparently not seriously considered — back in 2018 about stepping up border security.

The Times report says that in one meeting, weeks before the midterms, officials suggested using a “heat ray” to stop migrants at the border:

Developed by the military as a crowd dispersal tool two decades ago, the Active Denial System had been largely abandoned amid doubts over its effectiveness and morality. Two former officials who attended the afternoon meeting at the Homeland Security Department on Oct. 22, 2018, said the suggestion that the device be installed at the border shocked attendees, even if it would have satisfied the president. It is not known whether Mr. Trump knew of the microwave suggestion, but it showed the lengths that some officials were willing to go to satisfy the president.

Then-DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen reportedly smacked down the idea after the meeting and said “she would not authorize the use of such a device, and it should never be brought up again in her presence.”

Daily Beast national security reporter Spencer Ackerman — who reported on the Active Denial System a few years ago after being shot by it twice — tweeted this afternoon, “It feels like the part of your body it impacts has suddenly entered a furnace.”

Earlier this week former Trump DHS official Miles Taylor opened up about how tough President Donald Trump wanted security to be at the border, including spikes sharp enough to “pierce human flesh” and the president asking for a cost estimate about a moat. Taylor also claimed in a new ad that Trump promised officials that if they broke the law to get the job done at the border he would just pardon them.