{"word_count": 217, "character_count": 1472}
People, not numbers." Nobody likes quotas. When there’s even a whiff of a parking-ticket quota, the public is outraged. When France imposed a quota on imported American movies, it provoked international controversy.But there is one quota — and a pernicious one — that no one denies. While the Congress is to be congratulated for passing an appropriations bill with bipartisan support, there are troublesome riders attached to it. One is the rider establishing a quota of a minimum of 34,000 immigrants in detention on a daily basis while they resolve their immigration status.The detention quota is unprecedented and unique to the immigration context. As Florida Rep. Ted Deutch, a Democrat, explained to Bloomberg News in June 2013: “No other law enforcement agencies have a quota for the number of people that they must keep in jail.”But hard-liners in Congress fight tirelessly to keep it in place. Last year, when the prisoner population dipped to 30,773, U.S. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul wrote a pointed public letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton, informing him that he was “in clear violation of the statute” and its 34,000 prisoner requirement.Notice that’s not the number of immigrants Congress wants to deport; it’s the number Congress insists on incarcerating while they await their fate."  ...More :http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/immigrants-jailed-hit-number-article-1.1583488#ixzz2r6biwSTp