While a high number of immigrants continue to be detained on a daily basis (396,906 in 2011), private prisons make millions of dollars per year and leave taxpayers to carry the bill, according to a recent USA TODAY article:

Editor's Note: A recent news report recounted how activists with the National Immigrant Youth Alliance have placed themselves intentionally in deportation proceedings in order to enter the Broward Transitional Center, an immigration detention facility in Florida. They say they encountered scores of detainees who shouldn't be there under the Obama administration's revised deportation policies. What follows is a first-person account by one of the detainees, Marco Saavedra, a former intern at Sojourners.

New reports show that the re-arrest rate of undocumented immigrants is 16%. The report was a case study of 46,734 undocumented immigrants who were booked into jail, but released before they were handed over to immigration officials. Of those, 16% of those were rearrested for other crimes.

Immigrants offer new and rich forms of culture to societies, but these contributions often are met with mixed reactions and, in many cases, even oppositions. As commentators have noted, historical trends reveal a love-hate relationship with immigrants in the United States.

Can America still afford to be a generous immigrant nation? Can it afford not to be?

These are the questions posed by Nine Network of Public Media's and PBS's documentary Homeland: Immigration in America. The first of a three-part series focused on job issues.

While the largest Hispanic populations are in California and Texas, the fastest growing Hispanic populations are in smaller Southern and Midwestern towns.

The reality, however, is that laws are human constructs, just as imperfect as their creators. The founders of this country understood the dynamic between law and citizens, which is why we have amendments.

Some of the most heinous acts in human history have been perpetrated in the name of the rule of law. During the Salem witch trials, citizens were sentenced to death based on mass hysteria, fabrications and vendettas. Slavery was legal. Only a generation ago, it was illegal for African-Americans to drink from the same water fountains as whites.

E-mails from former Sen. Russell Pearce purportedly reveal the motivations behind SB 1070, claims the ACLU:

“The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona has released thousands of e-mails that it says proves Arizona's controversial immigration law was racially motivated.

The e-mails, acquired through a public records request to the state Legislature, are to and from former senator Russell Pearce, who authored Senate Bill 1070.”

What would you do if you were offering a voluntary service, like medical or pastoral care to a vulnerable population, and the clients repeatedly spoke of abuses by a specific perpetrator? You would be a “mandated reporter,” which for the caring professions means you must report certain cases of abuse to authorities. But then you find out that federal employees—law enforcement, in fact—are committing the atrocities. How do you call the cops on the cops?