With dr. Anthony fauci and cdc director Rochelle Walensky said to start any second. And also on the hill, homeland secretary is making his first appearance since his confirmation, that hearing which you see right there is happening as dhs says the number of migrants at the border is nearing a two decade my. Former Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano will join us to talk about it all. But we start with the news out of georgia, were waiting for officials to give an up date in the next 30 minutes. But here is what we know so far. This is the man arrested and now in custody for a series of shootings across the atlanta area. He is 21 years old and he is accused of killing eight people in a series of shootings at three spas there. Police say six of the eight victims appear to be women of asian descent and they are not commenting on a potential office. This is as hate crimes across the country are spiking and new data shows that there were nearly 3800 antiasian racist incidents and mostly against women. And that is all just in the last year. White house says President Biden has been briefed on the shootings and secretary of state Antony Blinken who is traveling in south korea today addressed the attacks this morning sending condolences to the friends and families of the victims. Horrified by this violent. It has no place in america or anyplace. Well stand up for the right of our fellow americans, korean americans, to be safe and to be treated with dignity. Nbcs blayne alexander is in atlanta for us. Also with us is vicky nguyen and also National Security analyst frank figliuzzi. Good morning to all of you. Nbc has learned that the fbi is assisting local police there in atlanta working on this investigation, so bring us up to speed. What is the latest on the investigation and a possible motive here . Reporter well, there are certainly a lot of moving pieces here. Were talking about three different crime scenes, three different shootings all of which unfolded over the course of about an hour or so. So the police where im standing here in atlanta, this is gold spa and just feet away there was another location that shooting also happened. So two right here in the same proximity. But it started at a location that was about 45 minutes north of here at a spa in a place just outside of metro georgia, and that is where police first got reports of shots fired. So as officials there in Cherokee County were dealing with that shooting, we understand the police here in atlanta got a call about a shooting here. They came to one location and as they were working on that shooting got called for shots fired at another spa right across the street. So officials are saying that they believe that all three are connected. They believe that the man in custody that you mentioned is responsible for all three shootings. But the biggest question of course is what is the motive, police are not releasing a motive, they are not labeling this a hate crime. But notable that they areal not ruling it out just as of yet. They are saying that they are looking at all possibilities for what could have caused this. In less than 30 minutes, well be hearing from the Atlanta Police department that are taking over two of the shootings. And so well ask what do we know, what is the motivation. Of course the suspect is in custody. What have they been able to learn while questioning him. And then of course well do everything we can to find out the names of the victims, find out more about those eight people that were killed as well. And well take you to that press Conference Live when it happens. Frank, at i understand it, you used to live in the atlanta area and work at the Fbi Field Office in atlanta. Based on your experience, give us a sense of what investigators are doing right now. What is their top priority. They set up a joint Operations Command so that they can connect the dots with the investigators on this and the fbi helps provide that dot connection. They are looking for motive, they are getting search warrants if they havent already, they are seizing his devices and they are scouring and scrubbing august the Electronic Devices while simultaneously conducting dozens of interviews ofcoworke members trying to get a picture of why this happened. Why is there a sense of urgency . Because there could be evidence that indicates that others like him are similarly motivated for whatever reason and he may have been part of a group, we dont know that, and it may be that this is triggering other people in their minds to do something similar. And i caution you because my sources in atlanta tell me to very cautiously approach this notion that the target, the motivation, could be hate or asian based crime. What were hearing so far is that this is a very devoutly religious person, perhaps a religious zealot. And we cant rule out the possibility that he was acting out against some kind of on which position to the proliferation of these kinds of establishments in the community. They simply dont know yet. It is early. But they are all over it. And frank makes a good point, we dont yet know anything about the potential motive here. But the group stop Asian American and Pacific Islander hate, they put out new data that we shared yesterday and they say that they received 3800 reports of antiasian hate incidents in the past year, most of the reports included verbal harassment, shunning and physical assault and women reported hate incidents at more than twice the rate of men. And youve been covering this spike in hate crimes. Give us a sense of what the impact of these numbers have been on Asian Americans across the country. How is this resonating with folks . I think i woke up with a very heavy hart sick to my stomach this morning, couldnt sleep as this news was developing. As frank said, regardless of the motive, whether it was a hate crime or a religious zealot, you have eight young women whose families are devastated. The fact that six are asian, think about the backdrop that Asian Americans have been experiencing over the past year. Not only dealing with the virus that we all are dealing with, the coronavirus, but also the racism virus, this idea that somehow Asian Americans are responsible for the virus or responsible for spreading it more than any other group. That is false. But that has sparked and inflamed some discrimination and antiasian sentiment and you see the numbers there, everyone weve talked to from academics to Law Enforcement say that those are just a fraction of what is actually happening. So it is weighing heavily on many in the community. I dont want to speak for everyone in the Asian American community. It is very diverse. But i will say from looking at my social media and talking to my friends and people in the community, people want woor were just all sick and tired of being sick and tired. What is encouraging is seeing people speaking out on behalf of Asian Americans, some of the tweets from bernice king, lebron james, helping people to feel like they are being seen and heard. And weve talked about this a lot over the past year that words matter. I was asked when President Biden recognized what was happening and said we have to to stop the hate, did that make an impact, and i believe it did. I think people in the Aapi Community finally feel like they are being seen and this is going to change. But it will take action and it is also going to take people taking care of their Mental Health too and just stepping away when they need to because it is triggering and traumatic. Frank, in the time that we have left, nbc has learned that the nypd has deployed counterterrorism officers to asian communities out of what they call an abundance of caution. So tell us what has to happen for a locality like new york to make that decision based on what happened in atlanta. Nypd is probably the best in the country as reacting and responding swiftly to a potential trend or triggering event that could cause other like minded people to do the same thing. So they are doing this in an abundance of caution. It makes perfect sense regardless of the motivation of the suspect in atlanta, someone in the new york area could be triggered to do this for an entirely different reason. So that is a smart choice. I want to just piggyback on what was being said about motivation and asian hate crime. Regardless of this actors motivation, these women who have been shot and killed are double victims. They are victims in the industry that enslaves women and traffics them in these establishments. So the notion that even if this is perhaps a religiously based zealot, he has done the wrong thing for maybe the right reason, but he is attacking the wrong people. These are not people who run the industry, these are people who are victims of the sex trafficking industry. And i think that we need to remember that. Thank you all for your insights. Well head back to the hill and the Covid Vaccine hearing with top health officials. Leigh ann caldwell is covering that for us. So part of the backdrop for todays questioning is reporting that so far one in four members of congress have opted against receiving the vaccine. Members of congress had that vaccine made available to them almost as soon as it was approved. And yet 25 of them are saying no thanks. Reporter well, geoff, that mirrors what public polling says too. That about 25 of people who have been polled say that they have no plans to get that vaccine. Almost half of them are trump supporters. Of course we saw the former President Donald Trump say on fox news yesterday that he encouraged people to get that vaccine. So well see if those numbers do start to shift at all. But dr. Fauci is coming to testify to tout the fact that the country is averaging about 2. 5 million vaccines a day, but he is also going to talk about the danger and the risk of these variants and how the research is going regarding vaccines and how they pertain to the south africa and uk variant. Well also hear from director walensky, she will tout an 11 decrease in infections, she will tout a 19 decrease in deaths. But one thing that is also striking to me that she is going to say according to her Opening Statement is that the cdc recommends that schools are the last to close and the first to reopen. We have seen across the country that that is in fact not the case in many places. And that is still a very hot issue. Shell probably got a lot of questions about schools and the vaccines. I think that is a safe assumption. Leigh ann caldwell, thanks to you. Lets stay on the hill and talk more about the growing rue man humanitarian describe success at the border. Homeland secretary may be in for tough questioning as he makes his first appearance before the house Homeland Security committee. Lets bringin julia ainsley. His appearance is happening a day after he said that Border Apprehensions are expected to reach the highest level in two decades. Tell us more about that. Reporter thats right. And actually just as im speaking to you, he just got to the topic of that surge at the border. He is talking about everything that his administration that this administration is doing at the border, but that because they are not sending back unaccompanied children, they are seeing a surge of those. Also a surge of single documents. But right before he spoke, the chairman of the Committee Bennie Thompson said again that this is something that they inherited but that they want to see that children are treated humanely, that the policies under the past administration shouldnt Carry Forward in any way now. So we expect him to get a lot of tough questions on that as well as questions about what the department is doing to combat domestic terrorism. He did call right wing extremism a lethal and persistent threat at the top of his opening remarks. And we can expect him to go through more numbers. We know just yesterday that we learned that 4200 unaccompanied children were in Border Patrol custody as of sunday. We may get an update on that. And we also will want to hear from him how these children are being treated in Border Patrol custody and what they are doing to get the children out of that situation as quickly as possible. Julia, thank you. With me now is Janet Napolitano, she served in that position under former president obama. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. So i want to start with this, because President Biden addressed the growing problem, the sort of uptick in migrants at the border in his abc interview. Lets take a look at that. Do you have to say quite clearly dont come . Yes, i can say quite clearly dont come. And what were in the process of getting set up, dont leave your town or city or community. The latest numbers show that message is not getting through. The Biden Administration says the border is closed, but effectively it is not closed to those unaccompanied children. So how does this administration address this issue, do you think . How best should they address it . Well, i think the number one thing they need to address is how we treat these unaccompanied minors who are now in our country, how we get them moved from dhs facilities to health and Human Services facilities within 72 hours. And then from hhs to the care of a vetted adult, typically a family member. And how we can do that more expeditiously and quickly so that these children are not staying in these shelters for such a long period. This sort of waveof migrants though was expected. This is the beginning of a third wave. There are sort of shifts in migration every time there is a new administration. President biden campaigned on a more humane immigration policy. Are we seeing the unintended consequences of the Biden Administration perhaps moving too fast in reversing the trump policy . And the reason i ask that is because the Trump Administration made every effort to dismantle the asylum system. And so if you have a system that is in disrepair, and more people trying to gain entry to the u. S. , it would make sense that we would have the kind of situation that we have now where officials are trying to turn a Dallas Convention center into a facility to hold 3,000 teenage migrant boys. Unfathomable. As understand, it comes in waves and this is intense. The causes of it vary, but it really is a result of economic devastation, the breakdown of the criminal justice system, and then two bad hurricanes last year that affected the northern triangle. So there is no work and a lack of safety. The Biden Administration has the right values, which is to say that we are not going to be separating children from families, we are going to move children into the asylum system as quickly as we can. And move them into a safe situation as quickly as we can. But that means that you have to deploy resources at the border, do it quickly, and use all the resources at your command. So for example, they are deploying fema to help out at the border. That is a first. And i think is a good move. I want to ask you about the situation in atlanta, shootings overnight, waiting the start of a Police Press Conference sometime in this hour. But based on your experience as Homeland Security secretary in the obama administration, is dhs, the fbi, are they doing enough to counter domestic terrorism in particular White Supremacy domestic terrorism . And that is separate from this investigation which of course we dont yet know about the motive. We dont really know enough about the terrible shooting in atlanta except to say that our sympathies go out to the family and friends of those who were killed yesterday. With respect to domestic terrorism, i think that secretary and director are all over it, they have upped the priority of gles ittic terrorism within the whole suite of threats that have to be confronted by the United States at any given time. And i think that testimony it will remain a priority for the next months and indeed years. Janet napolitano, we thank you for your time. And back on capitol hill, well bring you testimony from the heads once they begin. And just a few minutes from now, the Atlanta Police expected to hold a News Conference. Atlanta o hold a News Conference mornings were made for Better Things than Rheumatoid Arthritis. When considering another treatment, ask about xeljanz. A pill for adults with moderate to severe Rheumatoid Arthritis when methotrexate has not helped enough. Xeljanz can help relieve joint pain and swelling, stiffness, and helps stop further joint damage, even without methotrexate. Xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections. Before and during treatment, your doctor should check for infections, like tb and do blood tests. Tell your doctor if youve had hepatitis b or c, have flulike symptoms, or are prone to infections. 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