Zombie companies in China. Crippling student bills in America. Sky-high mortgages in Australia. Another default scare in Argentina.

A decade of easy money has left the world with a record $250 trillion of government, corporate and household debt. That’s almost three times global economic output and equates to about $32,500 for every man, woman and child on Earth.

Much of that legacy stems from policymakers’ deliberate efforts to use borrowing to keep the global economy afloat in the wake of the financial crisis. Rock-bottom interest rates in the years since has kept the burden manageable for most, allowing the debt mountain to keep growing.

Now, as policymakers grapple with the slowest growth since that era, a suite of options on how to revive their economies share a common denominator: yet more debt.

From Green New Deals to Modern Monetary Theory, proponents of deficit spending argue central banks are exhausted and that massive fiscal spending is needed to yank companies and households out of their funk.

Fiscal hawks argue such proposals will merely sow the seeds for more trouble. But the needle seems to be shifting on how much debt an economy can safely carry.

Central bankers and policymakers from European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde to the International Monetary Fund have been urging governments to do more, arguing it’s a good time to borrow for projects that will reap economic dividends.

“Previous conventional wisdom about advanced economy speed limits regarding debt-to-GDP ratios may be changing,” said Mark Sobel, a former U.S. Treasury and International Monetary Fund official. “Given lower interest bills and markets’ pent-up demand for safe assets, major advanced economies may well be able to sustain higher debt loads.”

Rising expectations of fiscal stimulus measures across the globe have contributed to a pickup in bond yields, spurred by signs of a bottoming in the world’s economic slowdown. Ten-year Treasury yields climbed back above 1.80% this week, while their Japanese counterparts edged up closer to zero.

A constraint for policy makers, though, is the legacy of past spending as pockets of credit stress litter the globe.

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At the sovereign level, Argentina’s newly elected government has promised to renegotiate a record $56-billion credit line with the IMF, stoking memories of the nation’s economic collapse and debt default in 2001. Turkey, South Africa and others have also had scares.

As for corporate debt, American companies alone account for around 70% of this year’s total corporate defaults even amid a record economic expansion. And in China, companies defaulting in the onshore market will probably hit a record next year, according to S&P Global Ratings.

So called zombie companies — firms that are unable to cover debt-servicing costs from operating profits over an extended period and have muted growth prospects — have risen to around 6% of non-financial listed shares in advanced economies, a multi-decade high, according to the Bank for International Settlements. That hurts both healthier competitors and productivity.

As for households, Australia and South Korea rank among the most indebted.

The debt drag is hanging over the next generation of workers, too. In the U.S., former students now owe $1.5 trillion and are struggling to pay it off.

Even if debt is cheap, it can be tough to escape once the load gets too heavy. While solid economic growth is the easiest way out, that isn’t always forthcoming. Instead, policy makers have to navigate balances and trade-offs between austerity, financial repression where savers subsidize borrowers, or default and debt forgiveness.

“The best is to grow out of it gradually and consistently, and it is the solution to many but not all episodes of current indebtedness,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser to Allianz SE.

Policymakers are plowing on in the hope of such an outcome.

To shore up the U.S. recovery, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates three times this year even as a tax cut-funded fiscal stimulus sends the nation’s deficit toward 5% of GDP. Japan is mulling fresh spending while monetary policy remains ultra easy. And in what’s described as Britain’s most consequential election in decades, both major parties promised a return to public spending levels last seen in the 1970s.

China is holding the line for now as it tries to keep a lid on debt, with a drip feed of liquidity injections rather than all out monetary easing. On the fiscal front, it has cut taxes and brought forward bond sale quotas, rather than resort to the spending binges seen in past cycles.

As global investors get accustomed to a world deep in the red, they have repriced risk — which some argue is only inflating a bubble. Around $12 trillion of bonds have negative yields.

Anne Richards, chief executive of Fidelity International, says negative bond yields are now of systemic concern.

“With central bank rates at their lowest levels and U.S. Treasuries at their richest valuations in 100 years, we appear to be close to bubble territory, but we don’t know how or when this bubble will burst,” she said.

The IMF in October said lower yields are spurring investors such as insurance companies and pension funds “to invest in riskier and less liquid securities,” as they seek higher returns.

“Debt is not a problem as long as it is sustainable,“ said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis SA in Hong Kong, who previously worked for the European Central Bank and Bank of Spain. “The issue is whether the massive generation of debt since the global financial crisis is going to turn out to be profitable.”

The holiday shopping season and the extended hours that come with it are taking a toll on America’s retail workers.

Employees at shopping malls and other outlets in 2018 were more likely to get sick or injured than in the previous year, making it the only U.S. industry with a meaningful uptick. The increase means retail-store workers are now worse off than those working in the manufacturing sector. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3.5 of every 100 retail workers suffered an illness or injury last year, up from 3.3 in 2017 and compared with 3.4 in manufacturing.

The uptick in nonfatal injuries, such as sprains, tears, general soreness and overexertion, comes amid forecasts for a record holiday shopping season. It could also mean higher costs for companies if employees require time off or are successful in an injury claim.

Some of the riskiest stores to work in include those selling home furnishings, used merchandise and building materials, as well as tire dealers and supercenters. Injuries and illnesses at each of those also increased in 2018 from the previous year. The most precarious are pet supply stores, where about seven in 100 employees experience nonfatal injuries, according to the data.

The top reported issues by retail workers are sprains and strains, although those declined from 2017, while there were increases in general soreness and pain, contusions, lacerations and fractures.

Overall, other industries continue to top the list. Those in farming have the highest incidence of illness and injury (about five per 100 people), followed by transportation and warehousing, which includes logistics and delivery centers for online retailers.

Deutsche Bank wants to level the playing field with the start-ups that want to disrupt the finance industry. But it wants to keep the effort at arm’s length.

The bank has set up a start-up factory called Breaking Wave. The name and other features of the venture are intended to make it easier to attract staff who wouldn’t otherwise want to work for Deutsche Bank, said Thomas Nielsen, who oversees new ventures at the German lender.

“They have an unfair advantage,” Nielsen said of financial technology companies. “And by the way, they’re building better products than we do. They’re solving a problem that needs solving and they’re doing it faster and better than most of the big companies do, which annoys the heck out of me.”

Banks around the world are partnering with fintech firms and developing in-house expertise to ensure they’re not left behind as clients seek quicker and simpler electronic applications in place of traditional banking services. Yet they can face difficulty in attracting talented staff, while their size and complexity means they’re often hamstrung by regulation.

Thomas Nielsen, Deutsche Bank AG

Nielsen said the company can pursue a broad range of financial services, but suggested that the way it can distinguish itself from smaller fintech firms is by catering to larger companies with complex business that stretches across borders.

“If you have just graduated and you have a job offer from Microsoft, from Apple, from Google, Facebook and Deutsche Bank, I don’t think you choose Deutsche Bank,” Nielsen said at a conference in Frankfurt on Wednesday. “I just don’t think you do. We don’t have that brand name yet.”

That’s why Deutsche Bank’s new start-up factory has its own brand, physical space and email server, even though it sits with Deutsche Bank’s offices in London, he said. That means it isn’t all that comparable to incubators at other banks, Nielsen said.

“What we care about is to not have the same restrictions on what software, what processes, what culture, what payroll do we want, so we want all the benefits of a fintech and the upside of having Deutsche Bank” as its backer, Nielsen said. “This is not hundreds of millions of euros, it’s a small team,” he said.

The company will have a maximum workforce of 75 and won’t staff any project with more than 15 people until it’s “validated from a commercial and technology perspective,” Nielsen said. Breaking Wave has a “bespoke risk and control framework” to keep it in line with Deutsche Bank policies and regulation and doesn’t have a banking license or the intention to engage in trading, “so all our financial risks do not apply,” he said.

Many of the projects started in the factory will probably fail to become “big” and the majority of them may be spun off to investors, Nielsen said.

When Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison started Stripe Inc. in 2010, there was little question about where they should put their headquarters. It had to be California.

Now, though, Stripe is leaving the tech mecca of San Francisco, awash in tech talent and investor cash, and is in the process of moving its main office about 10 miles to neighboring South San Francisco. What’s more, the company — whose $35-billion valuation makes it one of the world’s most valuable start-ups — is building up its staff in another state altogether: New York.

In September, Stripe opened an office near Wall Street, according to the company, and plans to add several hundred employees there in the coming years. The start-up’s planned New York growth is on track to outpace its headquarters’.

The city has long been a hub for finance, and more recently for tech. “New York is a global leader,” said David Singleton, Stripe’s chief technology officer. “It’s just an important market for entrepreneurialism and start-ups.”

Stripe is one of many Bay Area-based fintech companies now building up a New York presence:

• Plaid Technologies Inc., which connects various apps to customers’ bank accounts, has relocated or hired more than 100 people in the city over the last year, or about a quarter of its staff.

• Affirm Inc., the lending start-up founded by former PayPal Holdings Inc. co-founder Max Levchin, recently opened up a Manhattan office that has about 50 employees, the company said.

• Brex Inc., the business credit card start-up most recently valued at $2.6 billion, has permanently relocated its chief financial officer to Midtown, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing information that’s not yet public.

In some ways, the moves are natural for tech start-ups with financial ambitions. Despite the growing success of fintech upstarts hailing from San Francisco, Wall Street institutions remain on top of the financial world, and New York offers an appealing pool of potential hires.

Uber Technologies Inc., for example, announced the creation of a new unit called Uber Money in October, and will be shopping for fintech talent in and around Manhattan, according to a CNBC report. At Affirm, the company’s New York employees’ resumes are littered with names such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Often, financial technology companies that are just getting started set up shop in San Francisco to be close to tech workers with experience designing products at big companies, said Mark Goldberg, a partner at Index Ventures. San Francisco’s resident tech giants include Uber, Lyft Inc., Twitter Inc. and Airbnb Inc. But “what they don’t understand is the industry,” he said, adding that eventually, many fintech companies look eastward for hiring.

“What I think happens is that companies that start on the West Coast end up recognizing that they want to complement that DNA with capital market expertise, and with people that have been in and around banks,” Goldberg said.

Meanwhile, tech epicenter San Francisco has become less hospitable for some companies. Last year, voters passed a new tax on businesses that will be used to fund homelessness relief efforts, and financial services companies are taxed at a higher rate than other types of businesses. Stripe’s decision to leave the city was widely regarded by local officials as related to the passage of the new tax. The company, which strongly opposed the measure, denied that taxes were a major factor in the decision to move.

Stripe instead pointed to the limited office space in San Francisco. The city’s asking prices for commercial rent, which are the highest in the nation, climbed 7% over the last year to record levels in the third quarter, according to real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. And adding to the region’s woes: In recent months, fires caused widespread power outages in homes around the Bay Area.

Still, none of the fintech unicorns Bloomberg spoke to have plans to move their headquarters away from the West Coast. Stripe, while hiring a few hundred people in New York, has more than 1,000 employees in Silicon Valley. Affirm’s San Francisco office is many times larger than its Manhattan outpost. And New York-based financial services start-ups tend to have stubbornly lower valuations than their highflying West Coast counterparts.

For Plaid, New York is a homecoming of sorts. The start-up left the city in 2013 after winning TechCrunch’s Disrupt New York Hackathon, and, seeking proximity to engineers and investors, moved its headquarters to San Francisco.

“Us coming back and building a really big presence is a strong signal for NYC tech, which has made huge strides in terms of client base, talent and funding,” said Charley Ma, Plaid’s New York City growth manager, who moved from the West Coast for the job last fall. Plaid’s chief executive, however, will remain in San Francisco.

When I was a kid, my mom told me I was the original Gerber baby, and I believed it. Then my sister claimed to be the original Gerber baby, and by then our mom wasn’t around to straighten things out, the way moms do.

No one straightens things out like a mom.

We don’t have any moms in our house anymore, to straighten things out, to order the dog food, to remind us that it’s trash day or that the dentist expects us there Wednesday.

My mom’s gone. My wife is gone. Her mom is gone. But they all trained us well before they left. We know just how to decorate for the holidays, how the garland drapes across the mantel and where Posh hid our favorite Santa mugs.

Been a year now since Posh departed. On the sill in the kitchen is this lovely arrangement that our friends Jon and Lisa sent when she died. That plant has somehow survived the entire year — like us, in the afterglow of her ineffable spirit. In the memory of her dazzling smile.

On the one-year anniversary, I posted a little online tribute.

It was about her dimple. She had just one dimple. But it was a good dimple, on the right side. As if God and Monet teamed up.

Does heaven have a dimple section? Does it allow beefy beagles? May they all rest in perfect peace.

Thanksgiving was a milestone in our ludicrous run of sorry luck. Life’s funny, then it’s not, then it’s funny again — you can count on that, and only that.

The other day, the boy warned me he’d been hitting Wiffle balls in the garage.

“And?” I asked.

“I only broke one thing,” he said proudly.

“What?”

“The light,” he said.

As my buddy Daryl put it, I’m still the luckiest guy in Bedford Falls.

One light? That’s nothing. I complimented my son on his restraint, as I worried that maybe his swing was a little off (sometimes he drops his hands).

Yep, a year later life goes on. Last week at dinner, he and his sister Rapunzel, the one with too much hair, ran into Meryl Streep, an actress with too much talent.

“Her laugh is contagious,” my son reported later, then mimicked Streep’s trademark trill, which sounds like a piccolo tickling another piccolo.

Our neck of the woods is hardly a celebrity hot spot, but Vince Vaughn used to live nearby, and Miley Cyrus camped here awhile, before she shed her clothes and became a mega-star.

If there’s anything Hollywood rewards, it’s reckless nudity.

In our little town, Kevin Costner once came to back-to-school night. The other parents gave him props for that, as well as for sending his daughter to public school.

Good kid too. She and my older son were fifth-grade pals. To prove it, she once tied him to a basketball post with a jump-rope, which I think is where the term “dumb as a post” comes from — though it may have preceded that episode.

As a parent, you can’t overreact to antics like that. After a couple of weeks, Posh trudged up the hill to the little school and untied our son.

No angry note to the principal. We just assumed that’s what modern love had become.

Yet, spotting Streep at a sushi joint was something else entirely. The Actress of Our Time. Ethereal. If the sun shines right, it’s like she lets us see her soul.

“Her daughter’s someone too,” Rapunzel said of Streep’s dinner mate.

“Everybody’s someone,” I reminded her.

“Dad, we know that isn’t true,” she said.

You know, they call us boomers, because that’s the sound we make when we fall down, which we are increasingly prone to do. We may rant about younger generations, but they have nothing on boomer parents. When we were young, we bombed college labs and created free love. Before that, you had to pay for love, and no one had the money for it.

Much like the Greeks, boomers glorified love. Or at least made it more accessible.

Thing is, there seems to be less love than there used to be. Except right now, around Christmas, when we seem to grasp for the season more than ever, knowing it’s fleeting, knowing the holidays are when we’re at our most honorable and good. When, as a poet said, every kindness seems a hymn.

As with life, the Christmas clock ticks much too quickly. Good thing Starbucks started celebrating in July.

Whatever your beliefs, I think the best part of the holidays may be right now, in early December, when there is still so much that lies ahead — the hugs … the parties … the incandescent smiles.

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So spin the dreidel, raise a glass….

To all the loves we’ve lost, the moms, the children, the pals and the beefy beagles — wherever they may be.

The celebrities of the heart.

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You could easily label this the decade of the influencer, those YouTube and Instagram stars who make money by selling FaceTuned versions of themselves while hawking face creams, fashion collaborations, protein powder and how-to-improve-your-life seminars. Through their social media posts, they convince thousands or millions of fans and admirers to like what they like and want what they want.

But is all that glitters on the ‘Gram and elsewhere really gold? For answers, I turn to the woman who will likely go down in history for putting the “i” in influencer, and that would be Paris Hilton, the eldest daughter of real-estate developer Richard Hilton, and his socialite wife, Kathy.

I visit Hilton at her Beverly Hills home on a quiet, unassuming street last month. Despite having been robbed by the Bling Ring thieves and enduring years of public scrutiny, Hilton, I notice, has left the modern home’s bronze wrought-iron gate wide open, welcoming a revolving door of guests that include a photographer, publicist and large film crew.

Although she was born into the wealthy family behind the Hilton Hotel empire, the 38-year-old became a household name about 15 years ago thanks to her role on one of TV’s first reality shows, “The Simple Life.”

Seated on a metallic couch in her home theater, Hilton is wearing her signature look — one fans have come to know well: a pink velour Juicy Couture jumpsuit with Nike sneakers. Inside the room, there’s a decorative pillow with the words “In Fashion We Trust” and another one that has cherubs covered in sunglasses and tattoos.

Otherwise, the space is barren. It has an emptiness to it. Perhaps that’s because Hilton only spends a handful of days per year in Los Angeles. Or maybe she’s more likely to entertain in her two-story home’s living room, which feels like the lobby of an upscale hotel complete with an image of Marilyn Monroe blowing a bubble by artist Michael Moebius; a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk; large-scale photographs of Hilton; a neon sign that reads: “Life is Beautiful”; and a lineup of colorful gnomes sticking up their middle fingers.

When she’s in town — “which is hardly ever,” she tells me — Hilton mostly stays indoors watching television with her five dogs and two cats. She cooks, paints and creates music in her home recording studio. “Being an Aquarius, I’m creative,” says Hilton, who became known in the 2000s for her sparkly, innately girly fashion — the result of retail therapy, not an image architect.

“I was my own stylist,” she says, explaining she was in the spotlight before the rise of the celebrity stylist and “The Rachel Zoe Project,” which debuted in 2008.

Although Hilton says her “favorite and most iconic pieces” were stolen by the Bling Ring, as depicted in director Sofia Coppola’s 2013 film, she keeps the remainder of her designer goods locked away in storage. “I save a lot of pieces for when I have daughters one day,” she says. “I know that they’ll love them. So I have this whole area for my daughters — where all of that is waiting.”

During our chat, her teacup Chihuahua, Diamond Baby, is perched on her lap. This pint-sized pup fills the void left after Hilton’s beloved dog, Tinkerbell, died in 2015. Tinkerbell was often seen with Hilton and appeared on “The Simple Life.” That show, which arrived long before “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” or any of the “Real Housewives” series, is how millions of viewers got to know Hilton — well, the version of herself that she says she created for the cameras.

Petting her fur baby, Hilton says, “I finally know who I am, and I’ve never been in a better place. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about me.” And now Hollywood’s original influencer wants to clear the air about a few things.

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The original

Hilton was an influencer before the occupation had a name. “All my friends who are YouTubers always say, ‘You were the reason why I do this. I learned so much from you,’ ” Hilton says. “Things like that make me feel happy.”

A provocative Vanity Fair article and pictorial by David LaChapelle announced the arrival of Hilton and her then-16-year-old sister, Nicky, in 2000.

“We were teenagers, completely clueless,” Nicky Hilton Rothschild, now 36, later tells me on the phone between appointments for her new capsule shoe collection with French Sole. “Back then, it was so authentic and organic. There were no agents. There were no managers. There was certainly no glam team or stylist. Today everything is so manufactured. Young girls are now running around getting styled head-to-toe to pick up Starbucks.”

At the time, there was also no social media and no opportunity for Hilton to tell her story on her own terms. She was dependent on more traditional means of making a name for herself — print, broadcast and gossip websites. Her reign was long before the #MeToo movement, and it was a time when the slightest misstep — or major blunder — created a headline that wasn’t easy to clear up. It was also an era that provided a blueprint for every aspiring modern-day influencer.

I later reach out to Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor at Cornell University who studies female entrepreneurship in the social-media age. Duffy calls Hilton a “paragon of self-branding.” “There’s a quote from the ’60s. Daniel Boorstin wrote a famous person is ‘known for his [or her] well-knowness,’ and that was Paris Hilton,” says Duffy, author of 2017’s “(Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love” (Yale University Press).

“We weren’t quite sure what her celebrity hinged upon, but it hinged upon her self-brand,” she says. “She was engaging in a model of strategic self-promotion before self-branding became something that everyone did. Now we take this for granted. … She was doing this a decade before the rest of us.”

After Hilton escaped the tabloid spotlight, it was her longtime friend Kim Kardashian West who filled the void as her family members became household names by opening up their lives to the world on TV and online. “Paris, in my eyes, has done a lot for me in my career,” Kardashian West tells me during a media day last month for her new Skims shapewear line. “A lot of people became aware of who I was through my friendship with her.”

Kardashian West says she and Hilton “lost contact for a little bit” after she began filming “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” but that they “would run into each other and reconnect.”

“She was always really supportive and really sweet about it,” Kardashian West says.

Earlier this year, Hilton released new music including the electronic-dance song “Best Friend’s Ass.” The music video for the song featured a cameo by Kardashian West. (Of course, the moment recently appeared on “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”)

“When she asked me to be in her video, I was super honored,” Kardashian West says. “I would do anything for her.”

Although “The Simple Life” was billed as reality television when it debuted in 2003, Hilton says she was playing the part of a spoiled New York socialite sent to live on a farm with costar Nicole Richie. It’s her party-girl persona that viewers and fans know well from the gossip pages and blogs.

During the series’ run, Hilton gave the public what she says she thought it wanted, including her catchphrases, “That’s hot” and “Loves it.” When she first signed on, she says she didn’t realize the show would be on the air for five seasons. For years, Hilton says she has felt trapped behind that TV persona.

“I’m a naturally shy person, so it made it easier to be that character because I could hide behind it,” Hilton says in a raspy voice, deeper than the one fans might expect. “I was stuck playing that character and talking in that baby voice and being that image.”

Hilton says there’s much more to her. “I want to inspire people in the right way and I think that certain things that have happened in my life …” Hilton trails off.

“I just want people to know the real me,” she says.

She’s all business

In an effort to be understood, Hilton participated in Netflix’s 2018 documentary “American Meme,” which was directed by her longtime childhood friend Bert Marcus. The social-media-focused film, which Hilton helped produce, addresses her infamous 2004 sex tape, which an ex-boyfriend released, without her consent, when she was 20.

“It’s not something that I would ever want to be known for,” she tells me.

A shaming public narrative followed, something that wouldn’t likely fly in today’s #MeToo era. “Thank God,” Hilton says. “Back then, people were acting like I was the bad person or the villain … Today, if that happened, whoever did that to the person would be [vilified].”

In the documentary, Hilton says the scandal led her to contemplate suicide and fear leaving her house. However, one of the most-striking moments is when she says, “I would never be who I could have been.”

I ask her about her words. “As a little girl, I always looked up to Princess Diana and women like that who I respected so much,” Hilton says. “And I felt that when that man put out that tape, it basically took that away from me because, for the rest of my life, people are going to judge me and think of me in a certain way just because of a private moment with someone that [I] trusted and loved.”

Since completing “American Meme,” Hilton has been filming her own untitled documentary, which will be released in early 2020 on YouTube as part of its new original-series slate.

“I now feel comfortable enough with myself to tell my story. I wasn’t really before,” says Hilton, adding that she tried taking the high road when it came to public narratives about her. “My mom and my dad always told me, ‘Never dignify something with a response.’ Back then, there was no social media. So I couldn’t just go on there [and set the record straight] … I never stuck up for myself or said anything because my parents said, ‘You’re just going to draw more attention to something. Even if it’s a lie, just don’t pay attention to it. Your family and your friends know the real you.’ ”

Although it appeared that she retreated from the public eye after “The Simple Life,” Hilton was focused on building her own brand and doing charity work. In addition to donating to the construction of the cancer wing at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles in 2008, Hilton has also spent time volunteering at the hospital and with the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. According to Vanity Fair, she donated $350,000 and merchandise and visited the victims of the 2017 earthquake in the San Gregorio section of Xochimilco, Mexico City. Also, Hilton says, she donates her time and resources to a homeless shelter on skid row in downtown L.A.

“During Christmas, I’ll wear a Santa outfit and bring toys and spend time with the kids,” she says. “One of the reasons that God sent me here is to make people smile and make people happy.”

While promoting her latest fragrance, Electrify, in October, Hilton visited terminally ill children at the Dr. Sonrisas Foundation in Mexico City. “There’s no feeling like the feeling of seeing someone light up,” she says. “Their parents will say, ‘She’s literally not gotten out of bed or not smiled this long. My kid is actually standing up and walking. You are an angel.’ To hear that and see that and have that effect on someone? It’s a magical feeling. You can’t buy that feeling.”

But she isn’t Mother Teresa. Hilton is as complicated as the rest of us. Although she grew up doing charity fashion shows with her mother, Hilton became more involved with nonprofit work as an adult after running into trouble with the law in her mid-20s. (Hilton notoriously did a quick stint in jail after violating her probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving incident in 2007.)

Hilton insists she’s evolved, but one thing that’s remained is her sense of optimism. According to her sister, Hilton Rothschild, “Paris is like a big kid … We always joked about how I’m the older sister because I was always the voice of reason and protective of her. We still have that relationship.”

When it comes to her brand, Hilton has been designing a fashion and beauty empire abroad during the last 20 years. She has 45 branded stores in the Middle East and Asia. Also, Hilton was among the first to sign a licensing deal with global agency Beanstalk. It began with one fragrance, Paris Hilton for Women. The perfume collection has swelled to 25 and is said to have grossed $2.5 billion, according to Hilton.

Hilton also has 19 product lines including clothing, handbags, shoes, sunglasses, lingerie, swimwear and watches. And she has a skincare line, ProD.N.A., with eye creams, cleansing gels and serums (ranging from $29 to $208) at ParisHiltonSkincare.com.

“I didn’t want to just be known as the Hilton Hotel granddaughter,” says Hilton, who also calls herself “a huge tech geek.” She’s an investor in Roxi, an app that can be used in lieu of a party planner. She discovered the company while planning her birthday party last year. She’s also an investor in the Glam App, which she calls “the Uber of beauty services.”

Hilton is also planning to open a slew of new boutiques hotels and clubs around the world. She licensed her name and is credited with the interior design of the Paris Beach Club at the Azure, a community of luxury-resort residences in the Philippines. She attended the official opening in 2014.

“I love following in my family’s footsteps in my own way,” Hilton says. “I’ve always looked up to my grandfather and my father as businessmen.”

Her grandfather, hotelier Barron Hilton, died of natural causes at 91 in September. “When I was with him, like two days before he passed,” she says, “I was talking with him about what an inspiration he’s been to me and that I wouldn’t be the businesswoman I am today if it hadn’t been for them instilling that work ethic in me.”

In addition to her fashion and tech ventures, Hilton is also a music artist and one of the highest-paid female DJs in the world. “I’ve parlayed my party image into a huge, lucrative business,” says Hilton, who commands upwards of $500,000 to $1,000,000 for a four-hour gig. (In 2014, she landed a five-year summer residency as a DJ at Amnesia in Ibiza.)

“She was pretty much the first celebrity to get paid to go to an event,” Hilton Rothschild says. “Once she saw that that trend was fading out and all of the venues were putting their budgets into DJs, then she became the DJ. It’s pretty smart if you ask me.”

Finding her groove

In the future, Hilton hopes to travel less. “It’s a lot,” she says, adding that she has spent the last 20 years flying around the world 250 days a year. Hilton laments the fact that she’s never had time to explore because her schedule is so packed. “I mostly just see hotel rooms,” she says. “Any time I’m somewhere it’s because I’m working.”

Hilton Rothschild says her sister is “allergic to relaxing,” but Hilton says she is taking time off to spend Christmas in Los Angeles. Then the whole Hilton family will meet in West Palm Beach, Fla. “I guess because everyone’s, like, grown up now,” Hilton says. “Nicky has her two daughters, and my brother’s wife is six months pregnant. So we’re going somewhere chill.”

After calling off an engagement to “The Leftovers” actor Chris Zylka last year, Hilton is single. “I’ve been spending time with my girlfriends,” she says. “I’ve never been single in my life. I’ve always been with my boyfriend and didn’t get to have girl time.”

She’s also spent the last year soul searching. “I’m getting to know myself better and am becoming more confident,” she tells me. “I’ve always been such a people pleaser — always saying ‘Yes’ to everything and I’ve [recently] learned the power of ‘No.’ When you let people in and you’re nice, you’re going to attract certain people who don’t have the right intentions or just want to use you. So I’ve learned to make my circle of people I trust smaller instead of trusting and letting everybody in. I just don’t let that type of negative energy around me anymore. It’s toxic. I only want good people around me who have big hearts who love me for me.”

The term “sustainable fashion” tends to conjure images of shapeless layers, washed-out hues and an overall aesthetic that could best be described as “crunchy.” Celebrity stylist-turned-retailer Dechel Mckillian is out to change that perception with her ethical concept store, Galerie.LA.

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Located in emerging retail destination ROW DTLA, the 2-year-old women’s wear boutique stocks products that are eco-friendly, locally designed and produced, ethically made using fair trade practices, recycled and cruelty-free.

All those wordy, hyphenated descriptors aside, the key selling point is that they’re all chic.

As we head into the busiest shopping season of the year, Mckillian is part of a growing group of retailers promising a “guilt-free” experience, with opportunities to do good and look good at seemingly every turn. Each weekend this month, the store will host a holiday pop-up market featuring local designers who wave the “ethical” banner.

Perusing the airy, light-filled space, you can find flirty frocks, on-trend jumpsuits, high-waisted jeans and versatile intimates, all made from organic fabrics. There are gender-neutral garments by brands such as misterMrs and Faan. For shoe fanatics, there’s a small but stylish selection of ecologically responsible and cruelty-free shoes by Dopp and Taylor + Thomas. There’s minimalist, nature-inspired body-care products from the likes of Aenon’s and Earth Harbor.

Hozen’s canteen bags are made in fair-wage factories, and a percentage of the company’s profits goes to an animal charity. Rallier’s workplace-ready dresses help provide school uniforms to Kenyan schoolgirls. And Neococo, a line of hand-embroidered shirts, creates jobs for L.A.-area refugee women.

“I instantly felt Galerie.LA would be a good fit,” said Neococo founder Amrita Thadani. “Consumers today are conscious buyers. They want answers to ‘Who made my T-shirt? Is it fair trade? Is the labor safe?’ We’ve participated in pop-ups organized by Dechel where consumers were able to meet our team of women and learn about their transition from Syria, Iraq and other war-stricken countries.”

Mckillian’s road to purveyor of globally conscious tees, plant-dyed blouses and ethically sourced earrings was hardly a straight path. The native Angeleno attended UCLA, where she studied psychobiology. At the time, her only fashion experience was a college sales associate job at the now-shuttered Vanity Room in Venice.

“I never, ever considered [fashion] to be a career,” she said during a recent in-store interview. “I was on track to becoming a doctor.”

It took a single fashion merchandising course at El Camino College and a whirlwind European fashion tour through London, Milan and Paris to change her course permanently. By 2009, Mckillian was working with celebrity stylist Marco Morante, outfitting rappers such as Lil Wayne, Drake, Nicki Minaj and the Black Eyed Peas. She spent two hectic, eye-opening years on the road, surrounded by luxury logos, flashy frippery and massive amounts of consumption.

“Traveling, I was seeing waste everywhere,” Mckillian recalled. “We were on a bus going through Lima, Peru, and there were just miles and miles of beach covered with trash, a lot of which looked like clothing. I was also going through my own conscious journey of caring about what I was eating, what I was using for skin care and what was in my clothes. So it was this awakening moment.”

She switched gears and launched Galerie.LA as a sustainable fashion blog in early 2015, researching sustainable brands, decoding their mission statements and deciphering whether they were truly walking the walk.

“There was a lot of greenwashing going on,” she explained, referencing companies that exploit the concept of sustainable practices purely for marketing purposes.

The following year, Mckillian launched an e-commerce site with six brands and began to look around for retail pop-up opportunities. “I honestly did not have the intention of opening a physical store. My mindset was temporary. Being in the retail apocalypse, it was like, ‘You’re gonna open a store?! No way!’ ”

After a tour of ROW DTLA, she was smitten with the space; her bricks-and-mortar shop opened its doors in January 2018. The store’s aesthetic blend of modern, minimal and natural came from her love of artists Roy Lichtenstein and Georgia O’Keeffe. Mckillian also drew inspiration from highly curated boutiques like Opening Ceremony, Dover Street Market and Colette.

“I really wanted to make it a one-stop shop for the conscious consumer,” she said. “As we grow, I do see Galerie.LA as a department store where you can find kids’, men’s, women’s, body, home — all the sustainable products that are already edited for you. We’ve already done the research, which I think is the hardest part.”

Her research process includes verifying the Fair Trade and Global Organic Textile Standard certifications of her brands’ factories and fabrics. Mckillian said she prefers collaborations with emerging businesses over big corporations, claiming it’s easier to achieve transparency with smaller companies that don’t rely on outsourcing and middle men. “I take a personal approach,” she says, describing frequent exploratory phone calls with brand founders, as well as Skype tours of their facilities.

“Dechel was always someone with a clear-cut vision of what she did and didn’t like and was never afraid to let me know,” designer Morante said of his former protégé. “Sustainability is so important. I’m happy to see that she’s found a way to curate something that can be difficult to take to a wide audience, so that it feels fresh, exciting and relevant.”

As she broadens her inventory and boosts the store’s visibility, she’s also aiming to expand shoppers’ ideas of just who sustainable fashion is for.

“I’ve been told that the African American community does not care about sustainability or green products, and I’m like, ‘No, no, no!’ Let’s not limit this conversation to ‘Only white people care about green in L.A.,’” she said. “I really want to break down the idea that sustainability has to be for one group of people. It can seem like such an elitist conversation, and I really want to make it available to the masses.”

Galerie.LA at ROW DTLA

Where: 767 S Alameda St. Ste. 192, Los Angeles

Info: galerie.la

Hours: 11a.m. – 6 p.m. Monday through Sunday, with a special holiday pop-up each weekend through December.

You might have missed Lady Gaga’s two-day makeup pop-up. However, that doesn’t mean you’ve missed out on the entire beauty category this holiday season at the Grove shopping center in Los Angeles. Those who need to replenish their Dior fragrances will find the brand’s beloved scents J’Adore, Sauvage and Miss Dior at the Dior fragrance pop-up housed inside the Grove’s Glass Box space.

Also, Swarovski, the Austrian glass producer and maker of designer goods, has an on-site pop-up open through December. Keep an eye out for limited-time pieces including tree decorations from Swarovski and scented candles from Dior.

“The Grove sees guests from all around the world, and we want to ensure there is something for everyone,” said Julie Jauregui, senior vice president of retail operations and leasing for the Grove. “You’ll find everything from makeup to perfume, eyewear, jewelry and even seasonal holiday offerings like ornaments and home fragrances.”

Swarovski and Dior fragrance pop-ups, the Grove, 189 The Grove Drive, Los Angeles, thegrovela.com

Róen

Celebrity makeup artist Nikki DeRoest, who has worked on the faces of Bella Hadid and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, will have a beauty event that’s open to the public on Wednesday at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. She’ll be on hand to demonstrate some of her most sought-after red-carpet secrets.

“I wanted to bring that accessibility to anyone,” said DeRoest, who launched her luxe clean and cruelty-free makeup brand Róen earlier this year. “They will walk away with some tips and tricks for a holiday look.”

DeRoest will use eye shadows from her own line as well as makeup from other prestige brands such as Giorgio Armani and Yves Saint Laurent. The Los Angeles-based makeup artist has eight products in her own line. The signature ones are the eye shadow palettes, which she describes as “not a cream, not powdery, but a texture you’ve never felt before and with a nice texture that catches the light.”

Róen Beauty Masterclass with Nikki DeRoest, 2 to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Saks Fifth Avenue, 9600 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. For information and to RSVP, call (310) 887-5336; roenbeauty.com

Mutha

Mutha, a new prestige body-care line created by Los Angeles-based former aesthetician Hope Smith, began its life as something of an experiment in Smith’s kitchen.

“I started sending it to friends, who would come back and ask for it for their friends,” said Smith at a late October affair at her Malibu estate. “That’s when I thought I might be on to something.”

The fall event was to celebrate the debut of Mutha on the Violet Grey beauty e-commerce site. The product also is available at Violet Grey’s Los Angeles boutique. Cassandra Grey, Violet Grey’s founder, said beauty and skin-care products only make it onto her website if at least 70% of her testers give it the thumbs up. In Mutha’s case, “It came back unanimous,” Grey said. “Everyone loved it and wanted more. That doesn’t happen very often.”

Smith began developing the products five years ago while she was pregnant with her first son. She said she spent “10,000 hours researching products and looking at where I wanted to buy my ingredients from.”

The result is a body oil and a body butter that come in reflective purple containers. The ingredients in the body oil include oils from rosehip, apricot kernel, jojoba seed and grapefruit peel. Smith said the product is designed to help with hyperpigmentation and firming. The body butter was created from a mix of shea butter, coconut oil, mango seed and aloe leaf. It has a rich texture that is said to stay on the skin for hours.

Mutha products are priced at $95 and $104.

Mutha, violetgrey.com, mutha.com

Sagely Naturals

Los Angeles-based CBD brand Sagely Naturals recently added to its popular sleep-enhancing and pain-relief products with the Brightening skin-care trio, which rolled out in October.

Kaley Nichol, who co-founded Sagely Naturals four years ago with Kerrigan Behrens, said the idea behind the new line was to make it appear as if the user “actually got eight hours of sleep,” she said.

The launch event, which took place on the rooftop of co-working space and private club Spring Place in Beverly Hills, included actress-model Molly Sims, an investor in the brand. Products include a serum, eye cream and night cream containing between 150 milligrams and 250 milligrams of CBD as well as other ingredients such as vitamins A and C, amino acids and hyaluronic acid. Nichols said the inclusion of CBD in the skin-care line would add anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.

The brand was developed in Nichol’s apartment four years ago. Her pain and sleep products are now in 10,000 stores nationwide, including CVS and Target. However, Sagely Naturals’ new skin-care offering is in prestige locations such as Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom, and prices are from $49 to $89.

Sagely Naturals, sagelynaturals.com

Johnny Was

Long Beach recently became the latest Southern California location for Johnny Was, the Los Angeles-based women’s fashion and accessories brand. The label, known for its boho-chic aesthetic (think velvet embroidered dresses and tunic tops), has 52 freestanding boutiques around the country — 18 of which are in California.

“Los Angeles is our largest market,” Rob Trauber, chief executive officer of the 32-year-old label, which was restructured four years ago after receiving venture capital investments. (Johnny Was is partly named after a Bob Marley song.) “And while we weren’t originally looking at Long Beach, we discovered that the number of households in a five-mile radius that fit our demographic was large,” he said.

The 2,000-square-foot store, which soft-opened in mid-October, has an exterior painted by artist Chris Lord around nature themes with motifs such as butterflies, florals and vines.

“It creates a nice, free-spirited and bohemian dreamscape that picks up the colors of the collections,” said Trauber, adding that shoppers “can expect optimism. … We are a very happy brand — colorful and distinctive. We’re told that somebody who wears Johnny Was gets the highest number of compliments per wear. These are pieces you don’t ever throw away.”

Prices range from $150 to $400.

Johnny Was, 6420 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Long Beach, johnnywas.com

Unique Markets

Finish up — or get started — with your holiday shopping during a two-day event on Dec. 14 and 15 at the Santa Monica Pier. Unique Markets is sticking to its “shop small” manifesto by bringing together 150 mostly Los Angeles-based designers, artists and makers to sell their wares.

“We’re taking over the parking lot next to the pier so people can look out onto the ocean while they shop,” said Sonja Rasula, founder of Unique Markets, which holds regular shopping events around the country. “We’re bringing in crowd favorites like fashion and jewelry, and some great candle and apothecary products, to show the diversity of what’s out there.”

In the mix will be Rewilder, which makes its bags from waste from other industries such as tossed airbags from automakers; Bandit Bandanas and its fashion-forward options; and Pilot and its cruelty-free men’s grooming products.

“We wanted to offer unique and meaningful ideas that are more heritage pieces that you will fall in love with and keep as opposed to mass-manufactured things,” said Rasula. “It’s all about supporting local indie brands.”

Also, shoppers can have holiday portraits taken, get their purchases gift-wrapped for free and enjoy complimentary beverages. There’s a $12 entrance fee; children 12 and under are free.

Unique Markets, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 14 and 15, 200 Santa Monica Pier, Santa Monica, uniquemarkets.com

Sesame Street X Smash + Tess

Here’s a way to go to sleep with your favorite “Sesame Street” characters. Smash + Tess, maker of cozy rompers and loungewear, has launched a collaboration with the popular children’s TV franchise, which turned 50 in November.

“I was raised on ‘Sesame Street,’ and we wanted to create something that was comfortable and fashion forward,” said Ashley Freeborn, who with her mother, Teresa, founded Smash + Tess, which is run out of L.A. and Vancouver, British Columbia. “We wanted to focus on classic characters like Elmo and the Count and do an edgier all-over print.”

The new Sesame Street X S+T offerings include the printed “Monsters” romper (featuring Elmo, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch) and the “Street Smart” romper (with the Count, Big Bird, Grover). They come in heather gray and black and are for men, women and children. Prices are $129 for adult sizes and $53 for children’s sizes. The rompers are made from sustainably sourced bamboo and cotton blends. Freeborn said the rompers, like the others from her brand, are designed for transitional use.

“It’s a newer category of clothes that can go from sleep to the streets — a mix of loungewear and athleisure,” she said. “Wearing them will bring back all kinds of memories for our customers.”

Sesame Street X Smash + Tess, smashtess.com

Nickelodeon

Some of Nickelodeon’s fan-favorite characters are part of a Westfield Century City pop-up for the holiday season. The 1,000-square-foot space has an array of fashion and accessories in addition to toys and other collectibles inspired by Nickelodeon characters, among them SpongeBob SquarePants and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

“We wanted to bring items in that are unique and have a stylish edge,” said Andrea Fasulo, senior vice president of retail marketing at Viacom Nickelodeon Consumer Products. “The product assortment is a true mix. … These are characters that consumers have grown up on. If there’s an ability for them to take the brand they love and marry it with a collaboration that gives it a modern, contemporary take, that’s the best of both worlds.”

The offering includes collaborations with artists Romero Britto and Louis De Guzman as well as Colombian singer J Balvin on various contemporary pieces. (Look for a black sweatshirt featuring a Pop Art-esque rendition of SpongeBob.) In the mix are yoga pants, leather duffel bags and sparkly SpongeBob-inspired eye shadow palettes from HipDot, among the 250 different products in the space.

Prices go up to about $150. The pop-up is open through Dec. 31.

Nickelodeon holiday pop-up, Westfield Century City, 10250 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, nicktv.com, westfield.com/centurycity

MEXICO CITY — 

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday said visiting U.S. Atty. Gen. William Barr understood the importance of nonintervention in foreign policy, but there was no public indication that the two nations had resolved deep differences about the Trump administration’s plans to classify Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

President Trump’s statement late last month that Washington planned to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist groups sparked profound opposition in Mexico, where many view the idea as opening the door to direct U.S. intervention — while sullying Mexico’s international image and possibly damaging trade and tourism.

In a Twitter message, Lopez Obrador described the session with Barr as a “good meeting” and signaled that the top U.S. law enforcement official was aware of domestic sensitivities on the issue.

“As a lawyer, [Barr] understands that our constitution mandates that we adhere to the principles of cooperation for development and nonintervention in foreign policy,” wrote Lopez Obrador, a leftist who has sought cordial relations with the Trump White House. “This way we will always be able to work together.”

In a statement, Mexico’s foreign secretariat said that officials from the two countries engaged in a “cordial and respectful” conversation about various security topics, including “arms trafficking, money laundering … and how to confront together transnational crime and the international trafficking of drugs.”

There was no immediate word from U.S. officials on the meeting, which reportedly lasted 45 minutes and also included other high-level U.S. and Mexican officials, including Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign secretary, and Christopher Landau, Washington’s ambassador to Mexico City.

The planned designation that Trump disclosed in a radio interview is meant to disrupt financing and other aid for targeted groups through sanctions. His announcement came weeks after gunmen believed linked to traffickers killed six women and three children — dual citizens of the U.S. and Mexico — in an ambush in northern Mexico. Those killings and others have emphasized Mexico’s soaring homicide rate, much of it linked to organized crime, which controls the lucrative trafficking of drugs to the United States.

If designated, Mexican drug gangs would join dozens of other international organizations on similar blacklists, including Islamist, separatist and other factions with more overtly political goals than Mexican drug syndicates — which, while extremely violent, operate on a for-profit principle.

Trump’s comments immediately caused a furor in Mexico, where the history of past U.S. interventions— and of losing much of the country’s national territory in a disastrous 19th century war with the United States — are stressed in standard school texts.

“Cooperation yes, intervention no,” has been Lopez Obrador’s response to the Trump plan.

Lopez Obrador, who took office last year, has worked closely with the Trump administration on a number of thorny issues, notably trade and immigration. He has repeatedly praised Trump and veered away from direct confrontation with Mexico’s giant northern neighbor and key trade partner.

Many in Mexico fear that Trump’s move may have more to do with bolstering support among his domestic base in next year’s elections than with efforts to stem drug violence in Mexico. During his presidential campaign, Trump was widely assailed for perceived Mexico bashing as he promised to build a wall along the two nations’ border, assailed bilateral trade relations as unfair to the United States and categorized many Mexican immigrants in the United States as criminals.

It was also unclear how exactly Mexico would benefit from the designation of drug cartels as terrorist groups. Mexico already cooperates with the Drug Enforcement Administration and other U.S. law enforcement agencies in the anti-drug fight, and Mexican authorities point out that most illicit drugs are headed for the voracious U.S. market.

The United States is also the source of much of the weaponry used by Mexican drug gangs. Mexico’s former, heavily militarized war on drugs is widely regarded as a failure, and many experts say institutional reforms such as ending corruption among police forces, politicians and the judiciary are key to defeating cartels.

“I do not accept the terminology narco-terrorism,” Olga Sanchez Cordero, Mexico’s interior secretary, told reporters this week. “Yes, we have organized crime, we have drug cartels, but all in the category of criminality, not narco-terrorism.”

Many in Mexico also fear that the designation could harm international trade and tourism, linchpins of the Mexican economy.

“Many American businesses … won’t want to do business in Mexico for fear that there will be a declaration from the United States that they are doing business with people from the cartel,” Luis Ernesto Derbez, a former foreign secretary, told reporters last week. “That will reduce investment and the attraction of Mexico.”

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington and Cecilia Sanchez of The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.

HOUSTON — 

A flu-ridden 16-year-old from Guatemala writhed in agony inside a U.S. Border Patrol cell and collapsed on the floor where he lay for several hours before he was found dead, according to video released Thursday that further calls into question the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrant families.

The footage published by ProPublica shows the final hours of Carlos Hernandez Vasquez, who was found dead May 20. He is one of at least six children to have died since December 2018 after being detained by border agents.

According to ProPublica, Hernandez staggered to the toilet in his cell in the middle of the night at the Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas, and collapsed nearby. He remained still for more than four hours until his cellmate awakened at 6:05 a.m. and discovered him on the floor.

The cellmate quickly got the attention of a Border Patrol agent, followed shortly by a physician’s assistant who attempted a single chest compression. Weslaco police reports obtained by ProPublica say the physician’s assistant quickly determined Hernandez was dead.

Already, President Trump has faced withering criticism for the thousands of family separations his administration conducted under a “zero tolerance” policy at the southern border and the squalid conditions under which it detained parents and children earlier this year.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a statement Thursday saying it could not discuss specifics of the teen’s death due to an ongoing investigation, but that the agency and the Department of Homeland Security “are looking into all aspects of this case to ensure all procedures were followed.”

But CBP’s former acting commissioner, John Sanders, told ProPublica he believed the U.S. government “could have done more” to prevent the deaths of Hernandez and at least five other children who died after being apprehended by border agents.

“I really think the American government failed these people. The government failed people like Carlos,” Sanders said. “I was part of that system at a very high level, and Carlos’ death will follow me for the rest of my life.”

The Guatemalan government on Thursday issued a statement saying Hernandez’s death remained under investigation and that a “legal process” is ongoing. The statement did not address the details of the video or the reports of how he was found dead.

The Border Patrol’s statement on the day of Hernandez’s death says the teenager was “found unresponsive this morning during a welfare check.”

The video shows Hernandez stopped moving at about 1:39 a.m. on May 20, 15 minutes after he toppled forward and landed face-first on the cell’s concrete floor. Border Patrol logs say an agent performed a welfare check at 2:02 a.m., 4:09 a.m., and 5:05 a.m.

Dr. Norma Jean Farley, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, told ProPublica that she was told the agent looked through the window but didn’t go inside.

Police photos show a large pool of blood around the teenager’s head.

Sanders resigned in June as the Border Patrol was detaining thousands of people at a time, many for longer than the agency’s own 72-hour deadline, sometimes for weeks on end. As border crossings surged this spring, Trump’s administration sought to hold people for longer to end what it derided as the “catch and release” of immigrant families.

But the Border Patrol was not equipped to detain people for that long. Reports of people jam-packed into cells without drinkable water or showers sparked national outrage. One group of lawyers that visited a Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, described seeing hungry children trying to care for each other and one 4-year-old with matted hair who had not been bathed for days.

The Border Patrol has since reduced the number of people in its custody — largely due to the rollout of policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” in which the U.S. government has sent more than 55,000 people back across the border to await their court cases. Thousands of those people are now waiting in squalid border camps.

In a statement, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, called the CBP’s behavior in the teen’s death “inexcusable.”

“Today’s report calls into serious question the steps U.S. Customs and Border Protection claims to have taken to care for a child in its custody. Not only did CBP hold Carlos longer than the legal limit and apparently fail to care for him while he was sick, the agency seems to have been untruthful with Congress and the public about the circumstances around his tragic death,” Thompson said.

Thompson called for the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general examine all video related to the teenager’s case and release the findings “as soon as possible.”