Little-Known Immigration Mandate Keeps Detention Beds Full

"Imagine your city council telling the police department how many people the police had to keep in jail each night.  Sort of like a quota for traffic tickets, only it's a quota for human detentions.  That's effectively what Congress has told ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.  The detention bed mandate, as it's known, calls for filling 34,000 beds in some 250 immigration-detention facilities across the country.  From Arizona, NPR's Ted Robbins reports on the financial and human cost." - NPR, Nov. 19, 2013.