In the remote area where Caal and 163 others attempted to illegally enter the United States before being intercepted by four border agents, there are few resources, no medically trained personnel and no running water. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) described what he called “disturbing systematic failures” before Caal died from “sepsis shock.”

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Customs and Border Patrol officials say that Caal's father originally told agents his daughter hadn't consumed food or water for several days before coming to the United States, though he now disputes it. And Caal was in U.S. custody for nearly eight hours before her dad notified agents she was sick.

Members of he Congressional Hispanic Caucus toured the facility in Lordsburg where Caal was held and had this to say about the conditions:

“The only reason this facility is still open as it is now is because these cameras can’t get in,” Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) told reporters. “If one of your cameras could get in there, the public would see what we have seen and we would shut this down or we would restructure it so that it could treat human beings in a decent fashion.”

More: “Men and women and children, stacked on top of each other. And then having to use the facility in the presence of each other,” he said. The “hundreds of people in a room designed to accommodate 50 comfortably,” were covered in foil blankets to keep warm.

“It was without a question the kind of thing you see in these old World War II movies — not the kind of thing that you see in contemporary America,” Green added. “People would assume that I’m exaggerating but the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would not allow animals to exist in the conditions that I’m describing.”

CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, who traveled from Washington to join the lawmakers, “was very willing to have all kinds of conversations about all kinds of policies and practices” of his agents, Castro said. But “it’s clear that many of these facilities are under-resourced and there’s a lack of training and equipment, and all of that adds up to bad priorities or wrong priorities.”

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Caal’s death could have been a turning point in the never-ending immigration wars, but it has only fomented the partisan rancor that played out yesterday in Washington over building President Trump's border wall. And CBP has come under even more intense scrutiny for carrying out the orders of the Trump White House, without proper resources, according to the Democrats.

Investigate: In a news conference after touring facilities for illegal migrants, Castro and others called for an independent investigation and improvements for the treatment of asylum seekers in CBP care.

Resign: Castro called for CBP Commissioner McAleenan's resignation for his failure to notify Congress of Caal's death within 24 hours.

Lawmakers weren't allowed to interview the agents who interacted with Caal. But McAleenan told reporters that “CBP will increase the number of agents and medically trained personnel at the Antelope Wells and Lordsburg facilities,” according to my colleague Nick Miroff, who was also on the trip.

McAleenan said it's unclear why there are now large groups of families crossing the border in such remote areas, where CPB hasn't concentrated the bulk of its resources. These are not official ports of entry, where asylum seekers can be legally processed.

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“This is a brand-new phenomenon that is challenging our resources,” McAleenan said.

More migrants are coming: A group of 257 undocumented migrants arrived in Antelope Wells on Dec. 15 and just yesterday, 239 people arrived in the early morning, McAleenan said.

And there were little discussed yesterday in terms of policy solutions:

Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.) said that when he raised the idea of Trump's border wall with border agents, they said that they wanted "better equipment and more personnel."

“None of those border agents are going to come out here and say this is my name and this is what I think about the border wall but their message is clear: We in Washington have to do our jobs and our job is to take care of this country and to make sure that we take care of these asylum seekers,” Correa said.

At the White House

AND THE WALL FALLS, AGAIN: Well, sort of. A week after telling Democratic congressional leaders that he'd proudly shut down the government to secure $5 billion in wall funding, Trump bowed to political pressure and appears poised to sign a measure to keep open the government past Dec. 21. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the president wanted to avoid a shutdown and find “other ways” to fund the border wall. More from The Post's Erica Werner, Damian Paletta and Seung Min Kim:

Likeliest solution: “Democrats rejected a Republican spending offer made shortly after Trump’s retreat on the wall, and Congress appeared headed toward the lowest-common-denominator solution: a short-term funding extension that would keep the government open for a period of weeks and then hand Democrats the responsibility of passing a more lasting fix once they retake the House majority in January.”

There's always a 'but': “ But it was uncertain whether the president would sign such a measure, and the overall outcome was impossible to predict given Trump’s tendency to swiftly embrace new demands and discard old ones.”

Hmmm: “House and Senate Republicans have been in talks with the White House in recent days looking at other ways to try to secure funding outside the traditional appropriations process. They have considered redirecting already approved money, among other things, according to a person briefed on the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations.”

That may not work: “ Congress has already passed a defense law to fund the military through the end of September, making it hard for lawmakers to siphon off any money that is already allocated for military programs,” Congress has already passed a defense law to fund the military through the end of September, making it hard for lawmakers to siphon off any money that is already allocated for military programs,” Damian reports.

Not letting go: On Tuesday night, Trump On Tuesday night, Trump tweeted , “we are not building a Concrete Wall, we are building artistically designed steel slats, so that you can easily see through it..."

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From the Courts

'YOU SOLD YOUR COUNTRY OUT': Michael Flynn, a retired general and Trump's former national security adviser, got an earful from a federal judge who was supposed to sentence him yesterday and would not rule out prison time. The veteran U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan delivered his scolding before ultimately postponing Flynn's sentencing in a stunning development that means Flynn's cooperation with Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. The Post's Spencer S. Hsu, Matt Zapotosky and Carol D. Leonnig have more:

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Not a good start : Almost immediately, “Sullivan made clear he was infuriated by Flynn’s conduct — both in lying to the FBI while in the White House and in working to advance the interests of the Turkish government while he was a part of Trump’s campaign,” wrote Hsu, Zapotosky and Leonnig. At one point, the judge pointed to an American flag in the courtroom and told Flynn, “Arguably, you sold your country out.”

An uncertain future : Since pleading guilty in the Mueller probe, Flynn has assisted on “at least three investigations — including Mueller’s — and his attorneys and the special counsel argued he should get no prison time based on his cooperation,” The Post reported. With Flynn's sentencing postponed, “that now is far from a certainty.”

Oh, and by the way : At one point the judge asked one of the special counsel prosecutors if Flynn could be charge with treason. The prosecutor replied, “It’s such a serious question, I’m hesitant to answer it.” He later said the government had “no reason to believe that the defendant committed treason.”

Step back: Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman wrote, “Sullivan’s angry lecture from the bench — and his suggestion that he was willing to throw Flynn in jail — injected a moment of high drama into the long-running investigation and served as a reminder of the seriousness of the allegations that launched the special counsel investigation.”

Legal limbo : The judge didn't set a new sentencing date but asked for an update by March 13, leaving Flynn in legal limbo. Flynn joins former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in the wait — Manafort's sentencing is tentatively set for March 5.

A former Department of Justice prosecutor told Power Up that it's “very unusual for a sentencing judge to give a prison sentence to a defendant when the prosecutor is not asking for it.”

Looking ahead: “It actually undermines the ability of Mueller to get people to cooperate if the judge does that, because it shows that Mueller’s recommendation for leniency because of cooperation will not necessarily carry the day at sentencing,” our source told us.

The People

ALWAYS A SITE OF CONTEST AND STRUGGLE: As the fight over the border wall continues, Power Up talked to Kelly Lytle Hernández, a professor of history at the University of California Los Angeles and an expert on race and immigration, for some historical perspective on border politics.

Today's brand of vitriolic discourse is nothing new, Lytle Hernández told us: it actually goes back more than 150 years, predating the modern-day border itself. “You can certainly think about the U.S.-Mexico border as always having been this site of contest and struggle,” she said. “It has always been a struggle over migration across the border.”

When the migrants fled south : After Mexican president Vicente Guerrero abolished slavery in Mexico in 1829, thousands of slaves in the United States fled south for freedom. “Migrations across the border have always been about a search for greater freedom and liberty,” Lytle Hernández said. “ : After Mexican president Vicente Guerrero abolished slavery in Mexico in 1829, thousands of slaves in the United States fled south for freedom. “Migrations across the border have always been about a search for greater freedom and liberty,” Lytle Hernández said. “ Now, it's freedom from homicidal violence and then, it was freedom from enslavement.”

During the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, there was more violence at the southern border , as Mexico's revolutionary factions nd the rising political clout of Mexican-Americans along the border unsettled white farmers in Texas. Sparks of conflict between them eventually led to a brutal, and often overlooked, period of the American history. , as Mexico's revolutionary factions nd the rising political clout of Mexican-Americans along the border unsettled white farmers in Texas. Sparks of conflict between them eventually led to a brutal, and often overlooked, period of the American history. Read more about that gruesome history of lynchings and extralegal killings here.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries , the U.S. government complained that Mexico wasn't doing enough to secure their shared border, especially from Chinese migrants barred from coming here under the Chinese Exclusion and National Origins Acts, Lytle Hernández said. The latter of those laws established the U.S. Border Patrol, she said, to enforce what was essentially a “whites only” immigration policy.

It's important to look back, Lytle Hernández said, because “when we get to these new flare ups of racial violence in the U.S., we can better understand the grounds we stand on and the roots of these politics.”

In the Media