To the law abiding citizens commenting above, all I have to say is that the immigration laws are morally illegal and alien to any decent tradition.

They do not have rights

THEY DID THE CRIME NOW THEY DO THE TIME.

Also it seems clear that legal aliens, perhaps even citizens, were rounded up and trucked to holding pens.  Is that ok with you as well?

Jeralyn's point does appear to escape you - these immigrants are contributors to our society, not just drains on the system.  Many of them have been here for years, perhaps decades, working and providing a living for their family.  Your comparison to pickpockets completely misses it's mark.

As for taking jobs from Americans, that might be so.  I can't say for sure one way or another, and neither can you.  In any case, we have shipped tons of jobs to China, and I don't see anyone complaining that the price of Walmart's goods is too low.  At least low paying jobs here in the good ole USA contribute directly to the community in which that illegal alien lives, unlike jobs shipped out of country.

Maybe you'd prefer that all our meat products also be from some other country?  I suspect that the producers in this country might disagree with you.  I don't see us shipping beef animals, porkers and chickens to some other country in order to get frozen parts back.

1. there are upwards of 10 million people in the US illegally.
   
2. some of those people have legal relatives in the US.
   
3. many of these people work in jobs that Americans are unwilling or unable to perform, either because the Americans will not do the job or cannot live on the wage offered.
   
4. we have arrived at this situation in no small part through our willful failure (avoidance?) of immigration laws in favor of cheap labor.

the questions i think we should be asking are more along the lines of: do we want this situation to continue? if not, then what should we do to stop it from continuing to grow? this is a wholly distinct question from what to do about the people who are already here. perhaps a guest worker program is the answer, though i am skeptical that we can design a workable one.

then and only then should we tackle the question of what to do about the people who are in the US now. of course, in the real world any solution would probably require a global solution, but i do think that we need to break the problem apart first to think about it more constructively.

What you are really saying is that you want no borders, no preferences for your fellow citizens. What this protends is that living standard of those in the US will fall to those in Mexico and other countries, not to even consider the change in the culture.

The lack of enforcement is wrong, and has been wrong. As they try to play catch up, how else would you do it??

The lack of enforcement on the companies is wrong and has been long.

What alternative do you suggest, aside from declaring that they shouldn't be taken into custody until such time as better facilities are available for them (which would lead to a de facto result of never taking people into custody since I doubt very much you or the rest of the taxpayers would support legislation providing for furry hand-cuffs and resort-level detainment facilities)?

We've got competing interests here:
(1) We want to capture and process criminals.
(2) We want to afford those who are detained some basic protections as to process and treatment.
(3) We want to be efficient about it as possible (and this includes some calculation as to financial costs).

This follows with my personal theorem there exists within left-wing identity politics a totem of victimization with gays always on the bottom. Racism --- Islam --- Feminism --- Homosexuality. Live it, love it, learn it.

That's a particularly vicious kind of profiling, don't you think?  If your skin is brown and you work at a meat packing plant, then you can be detained with no more sufficient reason required.

ICE - America's very own brownshirts.