Why are we spending such a jaw dropping amount of money on people who do not pose a threat to society? What are our priorities as a nation?

Our detention system locks up thousands of immigrants unnecessarily every year, exposing detainees to brutal and inhumane conditions of confinement at massive costs to American taxpayers.

It is absolutely critical that the Obama administration act to address this devastating problem by ensuring that all immigration detainees, including those who are LGBT, are covered under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).

Rep. Lamar Smith's immigration detention bill is currently awaiting consideration before the House. Not only is this measure bad policy, but it also violates the U.S. Constitution by depriving individuals of their liberty without due process.

As a first step to address the systemic problem of sexual assault in immigration custody, the Obama administration must ensure that the final DOJ rule implementing PREA covers all immigration detainees, including the hundreds, if not thousands, of victims who remain voiceless and vulnerable under the current system.

The ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project receives hundreds of letters each month from individuals inside immigration detention who have been locked up for years, fighting their cases to remain in the United States.

There is one immediate thing the Obama administration can do to help ensure the protection of immigration detainees: make sure that all detainees are covered under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003.

Ahmad Tanveer, a Pakistani New Yorker held in immigration detention at the Monmouth County Correctional Institute in Freehold, N.J., died in anonymity in 2005 despite telling officials of severe chest pain and pleading for hours for medical assistance — pleas that were not responded to until it was too late.

Trying to fix the regulations misses the point; people with mental disabilities should not be in removal proceedings in the first place.

For the last fifteen years, IIRIRA has filled detention beds, fueled a booming business industry, and torn men and women from their families and communities, with no clear gains to public safety. After years of wasted taxpayer dollars and ruined lives, we need to end mandatory detention and deportation.

It makes no sense to be expanding a comparable detention regime that costs too much in wasted dollars and ruined lives, and does little to make us safer. Our series seeks a reckoning with an immigration lock-up system that has spiraled out-of-control.