Trump was ‘ranting and raving’ at White House meeting as officials struggled to convince him not break the law: CNN's Tapper

CNN's Jake Tapper reported Monday that when the president was visiting the border last week, he attempted to close down the El Paso, Texas port of entry at the border. Tapper also said that President Donald Trump told his team that all border patrol agents should be told not to allow any entrances into the United States.

To make matters worse, Trump wants to go back to putting children in cages and separating families because he believes it served as a deterrent to anyone coming to the United States. As a point of fact, it didn't. Border crossings have increased under Trump's policies.

"He just wants to separate families," one White House official told Tapper.

Sunday night, Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who would get into fights with the president over what he could legally do. According to reports Sunday, Trump would fly into a rage if he was told something was against the law.

"Nielsen proposed an alternative plan that would slow down entries at legal ports, but she argued, if you close all of the ports of entry, all you're going to achieve is end legal trade and travel," Tapper reported Monday. "That's not going to end illegal immigration, she argued to the president. The migrants will just go between ports."

According to two people in the room at the time, Trump shouted: "I don't care!"

"Ultimately, it seems chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was able to talk the president out of closing the port of El Paso and the other ports," Tapper said. "The president, however, was insistent that his administration begin taking another action, just denying asylum seekers entry into the United States."

Secretary Nielsen attempted to explain to the president how asylum laws actually work, but he seemed either disinterested or unable to understand.

"Behind the scenes, according to two witnesses, president Trump told border agents to simply stop letting migrants in," Tapper said. "Tell them, 'We don't have the capacity,' he said. If judges give you trouble, say, 'Sorry, judge, I can't do it, we don't have the room.'"

But after the president left, Homeland Security officials and leaders at Border Patrol told the officers and agents that they couldn't do that legally and doing so would bring personal liability onto themselves.

"You have to follow the law, the border agents were told," Tapper said. "Senior administration officials also tell me that in the last four months or so, president Trump has been pushing his administration to enforce a stricter and more widespread family separation policy. Not just the original policy, started by attorney general Jeff Sessions and undone by the president once it was criticized, that was a policy of prosecuting individuals crossing the border illegally between legal ports of entry and that substituted a separation of parents from their children."

Instead, Trump wants an "expanded version" of the policy. He wants families to be split apart even if they come in legally.

Watch the full shocking report below: