W I N N E R O F T H E 2 0 1 8 P U L I T Z E R P R I Z Ez

SUNDAY, JULY 7, 2019 • SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA • PRESSDEMOCRAT.COM

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INSIDE

Brad Williams was driving his sixth grade daughter to school one day seven years ago when he asked her

a simple question. Of all the people in the world she wished to meet, who is number one?

Anika’s answer: Megan Rapinoe, the United States national soccer team midfielder.

The U.S. women had just won Olympic gold in London, beating Japan 2-1.

So Williams got to work, hoping to make his daughter’s dream encounter happen. He teamed with Montgomery High soccer

coaches Pat McDonald and Jon Schwan and invited Rapinoe, who grew up in Redding, and her twin sister, Rachael, to Sonoma County to host one of their youth soccer camps. They came to Santa Rosa. They came to the Williams’ house, in fact.

“My dad came and picked me up from

Strawberry (Elementary School). He said, ‘I have something for you at home, let’s go,’” said Anika, now a freshman playing soccer at Santa Monica College.

She knocked on her own front door and

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ON THE PITCH: Tessa Clay, 8, left, works on ball control while weaving between her teammates during Empire Soccer Club’s girls U9 team practice Wednesday in Santa Rosa.

Women’s World Cup inspires generations

County’s young athletes, avid fans in awe of US team’s journey to finalBy KERRY BENEFIELDTHE PRESS DEMOCRAT

TURN TO WORLD CUP » PAGE A10

GOOD GOAL: Megan Rapinoe celebrates after scoring the U.S. team’s second goal June 28 during the Women’s World Cup quarterfinal match against France in Paris.

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“I just think she’s inspiring and when I watch the games, I think ‘That could be me.’ That could be me one day. I could be the other version of that.”ESTELLE PUGA, 9-year-old soccer player about pro athlete Alex Morgan, who is competing for the U.S. at the Women’s World Cup

HOW TO WATCHWhat: Women’s World Cup final, United States vs. NetherlandsWhen: 8 a.m. Sunday Where: Fox

INSIDEU.S. women’s team reaches final stop on World Cup odyssey / C1

Push for trial over cause of inferno

Lawyers representing wild-fire victims and insurance com-panies in the PG&E bankruptcy case have asked a federal judge to allow a trial over the cause of the Tubbs fire, the most de-structive blaze of 2017 and one of the few catastrophic infernos from October of that year that investigators said wasn’t caused by the utility’s electrical equip-ment.

In court filings this week, lawyers called the Cal Fire in-vestigation “flawed” and re-quested the bankruptcy judge overseeing PG&E’s reorgani-zation allow a California jury to decide whether the utility is responsible for the Tubbs fire. The fire ignited near Calisto-ga and burned west across the Mayacamas Mountains, killing 22 people and destroying more than 5,600 structures, including 4,651 homes, most of them in Santa Rosa’s Fountaingrove and Coffey Park neighborhoods.

The legal maneuver is aimed at ensuring homeowners, insur-ers and others with losses from the Tubbs fire don’t get short shrift when it comes to payouts. The filings signaled a trial would focus on allegations PG&E failed to take safety precautions

By JULIE JOHNSONTHE PRESS DEMOCRAT

TUBBS FIRE » Victims’ lawyers ask judge to let jury decide if PG&E liable

TURN TO PG&E » PAGE A2

CLINT, Texas — Since the Border Pa-trol opened its station in Clint, Texas, in 2013, it was a fixture in the west Texas farm town. Separated from the surround-ing cotton fields and cattle pastures by a razor-wire fence, the station stood on the town’s main road, near a feed store, the Good News Apostolic Church and La In-dita Tortillería. Most people around Clint had little idea of what went on inside. Agents came and went in pickup trucks; buses pulled into the gates with the occa-sional load of children apprehended at the border, 4 miles south.

But inside the secretive site that is sud-denly on the front lines of the southwest

border crisis, the men and women who work there were grappling with the stuff of nightmares.

Outbreaks of scabies, shingles and chickenpox were spreading among the

hundreds of children who were being held in cramped cells, agents said. The stench of the children’s dirty clothing was so strong it spread to the agents’ own clothing — people in town would scrunch

their noses when they left work. The chil-dren cried constantly. One girl seemed likely enough to try to kill herself that the agents made her sleep on a cot in front of them, so they could watch her as they were processing new arrivals.

“It gets to a point where you start to become a robot,” said a veteran Border Patrol agent who has worked at the Clint station since it was built. He described following orders to take beds away from children to make more space in holding cells, part of a daily routine that he said had become “heartbreaking.”

The little-known Border Patrol facility at Clint has suddenly become the public face of the chaos on America’s southern border, after immigration lawyers began reporting on the children they saw — some of them as young as 5 months old — and the filthy, overcrowded conditions in which they were being held.

Border Patrol leaders, including Aaron

Children dirty, hungry, scared, sick

TURN TO CHILDREN » PAGE A12

MIGRANT FACILITY » Border Patrol agents describe outbreaks of disease, squalor at Texas campBy SIMON ROMERO, ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS AND MANNY FERNANDEZNEW YORK TIMES

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Tents are erected inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection station where migrants were being held in Clint, Texas. The shelter has held hundreds of children in overcrowded conditions.