US President Donald Trump allegedly said that Haitian immigrants to the United States "all have AIDS" and new Nigerians in the country should "go back to their huts," according to a US news report published Saturday.
The comments were made during a heated meeting in the Oval Office in June between Trump and his most senior advisers, according to the New York Times, which cited two unnamed officials in the report.
In the meeting, where Trump read aloud from a document listing visa numbers by country, he also complained about 2,500 new migrants from Afghanistan, which he said was "a terrorist haven" according to the Times.
In response to the report, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders denied that the president had made derogatory statements about migrants during the meeting.
"General Kelly, General McMaster, Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Nielsen and all other senior staff actually in the meeting deny these outrageous claims," she said.
"It's both sad and telling The New York Times would print the lies of their anonymous 'sources' anyway," she said.
Trump campaigned in last year's presidential election on a platform to fortify the nation's borders.
But, his efforts to enforce a travel ban on citizens of seven countries were delayed heavily after a number of legal challenges. It finally went into effect earlier this month.
