From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

On December 8th in El Paso, Texas,

Guatemalan national Jacqueline Carl McKean died in the custody of U.S. Border Patrol.

She had entered the United States two days earlier with 162 other migrants.

She'd had fever near 106 degrees and persistent vomiting.

And family members said she was given no water by authorities when she was first held at a remote New Mexico station.

Her death came after many hours of waiting and bus travel, followed by a helicopter

evacuation to a Texas emergency room. Jacqueline was seven years old. The particulars of her

illness and death are still not clear. Her father, with whom she was apprehended, has asked the

press not to speculate. Also ambiguous is the

level of attention paid by authorities, although clearly the Border Patrol's bounds forward

operating base, where the calls were first taken, is not equipped for medical emergencies.

What is clear is this. Despite explicit rules, Congress was not notified of her death for five days after the Washington Post had already reported it.

And secondly, according to the Trump administration, Jucleine's death is her parents' fault.

This family chose to cross illegally. What happened here was they were 90 miles

away from where we could process them. They came in such a large crowd that it took our Border Patrol

folks a couple times to get them all. We gave immediate care. We'll continue to look into the

situation. But again, I cannot stress how dangerous this journey is

when migrants choose to come here illegally.

That was Homeland Security Secretary Kirsten Nielsen.

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