Wild horses couldn't keep President Donald Trump away from the chance of making a kill, according to a new report.
Under his administration, thousands of wild horses have been rounded up with helicopters, packed into metal trailers, trucked hundreds of miles, and sold off to be slaughtered, the New York Times reported Thursday.
“The [Bureau of Land Management] is saying to the public that slaughter is off the table, but they’re doing it in plain sight,” Clare Staples, who runs a wild horse sanctuary, told the Times. “They are turning a blind eye. And the only ones getting punished for what is going on are the horses.”
The Bureau of Land Management has been quietly exploiting a legal loophole that bans the slaughtering of wild horses by selling them cheaply to third parties to be sold abroad and slain, according to the Times' analysis of government records.
After Trump took office, the bureau more than doubled its sales to more than 3,700 horses, according to the report.
The mustangs are sold at a huge loss, as the government can spend $3,000 to capture a mustang it will sell for as little as $25 — meanwhile, the buyer can make up to $750 per horse at a slaughter plant.
The bureau makes the investment as part of its effort to maintain sustainability for the 73,000 wild horses that roam protected public lands.
It collects about 9,500 horses every year, putting half up for adoption and the rest into a “holding system" that now stores 58,000 wild horses at an annual cost of $100 million, according to the report.
The bureau has pitched buying a gas chamber to kill the horses and cut the costs, but Congress has barred such action over fears of an outcry, according to the Times.
But Trump has long been pushing for the horses to be killed — calling for Congress to act in Project 2025, the policy paper put forth by the Heritage Foundation.
The bureau responded to the Times' request for more information with a comment.
“[The BLM] remains dedicated to placing animals into good homes," they said, "protecting their welfare and upholding its statutory responsibilities on behalf of the American public.”