A shrine erected to remember those who died at Manzanar is one of the few structures that remain at the historic site, with the Eastern Sierra range in background. 

Now, as the federal government continues its unprecedented campaign of mass deportation and migrant detention, our patriotic state faces another housing crisis.

The Trump administration wants desperately to detain hundreds of thousands more of our undocumented neighbors and legal immigrants whose status it has lawlessly canceled. But it keeps tripping itself up.

Existing migration detention centers are overcrowded, can’t find staff, and offer conditions so poor (lack of bathrooms and health care, dangerous temperatures, unhealthy food) that courts and localities try to shut them down. Using old jails, near downtowns, makes detention centers easy targets for protestors. Attempts to convert old warehouse sites or build new prisons, as in Gilroy, violate zoning codes and various state and local laws.

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Even more expensive is the latest Trump strategy — having the federal government buy private detention facilities so that it has more control. The Department of Homeland Security’s recent purchase of the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego and the California City Detention Facility in the Mojave Desert from the private prison company CoreCivic cost $1.5 billion, more than four times the assessed value of these properties.

Why does the U.S. government use failed........

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