A heartbreaking new report by the Applied Research Center reveals that at least 5,100 American children have been stranded in the foster care system after their undocumented immigrant parents were detained or deported:

Between January and June of 2011, the United States carried out more than 46,000 deportations of the parents of U.S.-citizen children, according to previously unreleased federal data…The figures reflect a striking increase in the rate of removals of parents and raise serious concerns about the impact of these deportations on children, many of whom are left behind. [...]

[T]he Applied Research Center has also found a disturbing number of children languishing in foster care and separated from their parents for long periods. After a year-long national investigation, we estimate there are at least 5,100 children in foster care who face barriers to family reunification because their mother or father is detained or deported. That number could reach as high as 15,000 in the next five years, at the current rate of growth. [...]

If rates of parental deportation remain steady in the year to come, the country will remove about as many parents in just two years as it did in the ten-year period ICE tracked previously.

The report illustrates that the U.S.’s mass deportations of nonviolent immigrants don’t just hurt those who are undocumented — they tear apart families and strain public resources caring for children who should be with their parents.

In August, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would suspend deportation proceedings against many undocumented immigrants who pose no threat to national security or public safety. But that policy has been applied unevenly, and thousands of families continue to be needlessly separated.

President Obama recently commented on the tragic consequence of his administration’s immigration enforcement practices. Obama reportedly said that parents should have access to their children if they are detained and that he has directed the Department of Homeland Security to examine its family unification practices to ensure that happens.

Last year the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison company, received $74 million of taxpayers’ money to run immigration detention centers. Their largest facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, receives $200 a night for each of the 2,000 detainees it holds, and rakes in yearly profits between $35 million and $50 million.

Prisoners held in this remote facility depend on the prison’s phones to communicate with their lawyers and loved ones. Exploiting inmates’ need, CCA charges detainees here $5 per minute to make phone calls. Yet the prison only pays inmates who work at the facility $1 a day. At that rate, it would take five days to pay for just one minute.

Watch this report on the conditions Stewart detainees face:

CCA’s abuse doesn’t stop at outrageously priced phone services. One woman reported that her diabetic husband does not receive enough food, so she has to deposit money for him to buy more. Occupy Nashville recently protested outside of the company by holding a “human auction” to illustrate how CCA profits off of human suffering.

As Alternet points out, in the past few years, CCA has spent $14.8 million “lobbying for anti-immigration laws to ensure they have continuous access to fresh inmates and keep their money racket going.” Recent anti-immigration laws in Alabama and Georgia keep their facilities full and CCA profits high.

Since more prisoners translate into more profit, private prisons like CCA continually push lawmakers to enact harsher policies and longer sentences, according to a report by Justice Policy Institute (JPI).

Republican lawmakers across states are steadily pushing for more guns in public places — parks, stadiums, government buildings, churches, day-care centers, and bars. The latest push, however, seems to be for guns on college campuses.

Currently, Utah is the only state which prevents colleges from banning guns on campus. However, New Hampshire Republicans are hoping to make their state the next with a bill that gives the GOP-led legislature the power to govern firearm regulation on all private and public entities. Doing so would prevent colleges from instituting any ban on guns without the legislature’s agreement.

The president of New Hampshire Great Bay Community College asked lawmakers to at least allow the community college system and the University of New Hampshire to set their own gun policies, noting how the New Hampshire police “emphasized the dangers of eliminating current restrictions” when “judgment and behaviors are still being developed and tested.”

Rather than heed their request, the Huffington Post reports that GOP state Rep. Mark Proulx just lectured the colleges. “For people that are supposed to be so smart, you never learn from history,” he wrote in an email. “Gun free zones become killing zones”:

“For people that are supposed to be so smart, you never learn from history,” Proulx wrote from his state email account. “The history lesson you should have learned is that gun free zones become killing zones. These killing zones are the places that crazy people who are looking to make a name for themselves go.”

Proulx continued, saying he believes that allowing guns on campus would stop violent incidents.

“Not to mention when these incidents happen there were people there that could have stopped the killing early on but could not,” he wrote. “They could not because they were following some ridiculous law or rule that would not allow them to carry the weapon they wear every day.”

Proulx, a first-term Republican and former Nashua fire lieutenant, said he would be supporting the bill to prevent the creation of “another killing zone.”

The victims of the fatal shootings at Virginia Tech, University of Texas, University of Arizona, University of Arkansas, and San Deigo State, to name a few, apparently play no role in the history lesson Proulx espouses.

Yesterday about 100 protesters, mostly college-age and Hispanic, demonstrated in Montgomery against HB 56, Alabama’s extreme anti-immigrant law. Chanting “Undocumented, unafraid,” and ”No papers, no fear, immigrants are marching here,” they marched around the state Capitol and adjacent Statehouse.

Police arrested eleven protesters who sat down on Union Street between the two buildings and refused to move. Some of those arrested are undocumented immigrants:

One of those arrested was 19-year-old Catalina Rios, a student at Henry Ford Community College in Detroit. She identified herself an illegal immigrant from Mexico.

Looking like a typical American teenager with her long dark hair in a ponytail, Rios said she knew there was a possibility she might be deported as she sat in the street waiting to be arrested.

“I know that I live in fear every single day of that, so this is no different,” Rios said. “I’m doing this for all the immigrant students who struggle every day.”

A Montgomery attorney who volunteered to represent those arrested, Mike Winter, said he understood they were mostly being charged with disturbing the peace, but also could be held for immigration officials.

Additionally, Ernesto Zumaya, 24, and Caesar Marroquin, 21, were arrested when they sat down in the Statehouse lobby and vowed not to leave until state Sen. Scott Beason (R), the sponsor of HB 56, responded to their concerns. Beason, who lost his leadership position in the legislature because of racist comments he made, never arrived, and police arrested both men when the building closed for the day.

Zumaya and Marroquin both told the AP that they are undocumented immigrants and have spent most of their lives in the U.S. Marroquin said he wants to be a U.S. Marine.

Alabama’s harshest-in-the-nation immigration law has terrorized immigrant families and provoked them to flee the state in droves. Thousands of Hispanic students have been too scared to go to school, and some have been bullied and racially profiled simply because of their skin color. Because of all the ways HB 56 silences and victimizes immigrants, Mohammad Abdollahi, a leader of the protest who said he is an undocumented immigrant from Iran, said they were demonstrating for their voices “to be heard.”