There is a Congressional mandate that requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to fill 34,000 beds in some 250 facilities across the country, per day, with immigrant detainees (truly!). Not many people know about this “civilised” idea from the huge brains of the leaders of the US House of Representatives, so intent on cutting expenditure.

Most detainees are, of course, Latinos, who can be held behind the razor-wire fences for days, weeks or years. Every day a detainee is held costs the taxpayers at least $120. Add up all the nation’s detention centers and that’s more than $2 billion a year.

In an email to NPR, Rep. Hal Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, explained that the bed mandate is “intended to compel the agency to enforce existing immigration law.” Immigrants in detention range from violent criminals to people with no criminal history at all. In 2013 only about a third of detainees typically had criminal records. But in order to comply with the mandate, police are picking up people for traffic offenses and other minor matters just to fill beds. (Supporters of the mandate counter by pointing out that a total of 870,000 immigrants abscond after being ordered deported and go underground).

Alternative forms of supervision range from GPS-monitored ankle bracelets to routine check-ins with ICE. Those alternatives can cost less than $10 a day, but under the supervision of the Congressional budgetary geniuses the budget for alternatives is only about 3 percent of the federal budget for detention. (edited from a National Public Radio news item, PR November 2013).

Happily, Mexico at last is becoming quite prosperous, and the number of Mexican migrants is lessening. One hopes that prosperity and jobs will keep people in Mexico with their families and away from US detention centers, the best and the most Epicurean of outcomes.