to get some questions in. i want to go first to michelle vasquez. and she s a freshman political science major here. ms. pelosi, i would like to first congratulate you. i want to start off by mentioning on christmas eve a boy from guatemala passed away due to inattentive care by border custody. what can we do to improve and establish safer detention facilities? and just to clarify, there were two children. on december 8th. not only were two children to die, i believe in the last decade this is the most deaths while in u.s. custody. there have been other deaths which are tragic and the
bush, bill clinton, barack obama, all of our former presidents. this is departure. this is town hall so i want to get some questions in. i want to go first to michelle vasquez. and she s a freshman political science major here. i want to start off by mentioning on christmas eve a boy from guatemala passed away due to inattentive care by border custody. what can we do to improve and establish safer detention facilities. and just to clarify, there were two children. on december 8th. not only were two children to
right now homeland security secretariers y ers iker kirstjet the border. you re looking at 8-year-old felipe alonzo-gomez who died in u.s. border department custody. reporter: four days after felipe alonzo-gomez died while in border custody, tests show the boy tested positive for the flu with medical investigators still working to determine an official cause of death. he s now the second child this month to die in u.s. custody. today homeland security
in terms of taking ownership and fixing it, we heard from the commissioner from customs and border protection saying we are not built to deal with this. this is what he had to say yesterday. what we are seeing with these flows of huge numbers of families with lots of children, young children, as well as unaccompanied minors come into border custody after crossing the border unlawfully, our stations are not built for that group crossing today. they were built 30 or 40 years ago for single adult males, and we need a different approach, we need help for congress and we need to budget for mental health care for children in the facilities. secretary nielsen issued the extraordinary protections, that do include medical screenings. they said they were done for all the children done in custody yesterday. as you make your way to
dana: the death of an 8-year-old migrant is sparking an urgent effort to check the medical condition of every child in border custody after the child died yesterday. that was the second child in custody to have done so. the head of customs and border control saying his agency needs more help from congress. william la jeunesse is live in our west coast newsroom to explain how this happens and who gets the blame. dana, as you know, because the boy was in border patrol custody they will get most of the scrutiny. and depending on your party, it may be the blame agency has been asking congress for more shelter space and closing that asylum loophole for many weeks. pull factors bringing in now at 25,000 women, children and families per month compared to just 7,000 last november. we are seeing huge numbers of families with lots of children,