Yesterday’s tragic shooting of 13 would-be American immigrants taking their citizenship exam by a deranged Asian-American gunman has brought to light the deaths of other immigrants. But unlike those 13 killed in New Jersey, these immigrants did not die at the hands of a cold-blooded killer determined to harm them; instead they were the victims of America’s immigration detention system.

Every year thousands of immigrants are arrested and placed in America detention centers, some of them privately managed, either awaiting deportation or their asylum case has yet to be heard. The exceptional, Oscar-nominated film The Visitor illustrates the ordeal many immigrants face in America.

It is not that they are often imprisoned, and I think that law-abiding illegal immigrants should be free to apply for naturalization, but that the treatment of them is often inhumane and unconstitutional. Last summer, as a Senate intern I spoke with a constituent who expressed grave outrage over the treatment of detained immigrants. If only it were mistreatment, some of the prisoners die.

A government study obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act reports that at least 90 immigrants have died in American hands in the last 5 1/2 years.

A private company, Corrections Corporation of America, had at least 18 deaths under its care. 32 of the 90 deaths were in private facilitates. The fact that most of the deaths were in state or federal facilities makes the news even more shocking and disgraceful. It is one thing is a private company seeking to squeeze profits neglects an immigrant, it is another thing for a government institution to do so, particularly one run by the United States of America.

And there has even been a recent effort to blur some of the details of the deaths.

“Prison officials are now recording even fewer details about immigrants’ deaths, possibly in response to periodic scrutiny of the list. A previous list that covered the period up until 2007 included the locations of deaths; the current list records either the location or the facility where the inmate was held, without any evident pattern.”

The death of 52-year old Boubacar Bah at the privately-owned Corrections Corporation of America detention center in Elizabeth, N.J. raises the question of extreme neglect and even whether prisoners are abused. Bah’s death was previously listed as “brain hemorrhage, fractured skull” only then to be revised to “undetermined.”

Is this how a nation founded by immigrants and one that celebrates that past behaves?

50% of Americans can trace their heritage to Ellis Island.