On Wednesday, The New York Times told the story of Hiu Lui Ng, a computer engineer and immigrant from Hong Kong living in New York for the past 15 years.

Ng was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement when he went for a green card interview last summer. Last week, the 34-year-old died in custody after complaining for months of debilitating pain that left him barely able to move. His jailers denied him medical care or even the use of a wheelchair, rendering him unable to meet with his lawyer or other visitors. When he finally arrived at a hospital days before his death, it was revealed that his body was shot through with cancer and his spine was broken.

According to the Detention Watch Network , on any given day, the United States detains about 28,000 immigrants in a mix of 400 county jails, for-profit prisons and federal detention facilities at an annual cost of $1.2 billion.

Many of the detainees are children and pregnant women. Their sole offense is seeking entry into the United States — at least half of them by attempting to utilize our country’s legal process for doing so. Even those who are in our country illegally have committed no crime — violating immigration law is a civil, not a criminal, violation. And yet legal and illegal immigrants, many of them victims of torture and persecution in their home countries, are being corralled in detention facilities and denied even basic care, as Ng’s case highlights so tragically.

It doesn’t have to be this way. I volunteer at Freedom House, a non-profit organization in Detroit that provides comprehensive services to refugees, including housing, legal aid, health care and education — all at a daily cost of about half of what it costs to jail a detainee, who, as we’ve seen, may not even receive basic services. Freedom House is the only organization of its kind in the country — the only place to offer complete services to those seeking legal asylum.

Rather than creating more compassionate, low-cost Freedom Houses, the Department of Homeland Security would rather hemorrhage money treating the downtrodden and oppressed like dangerous felons, compounding the trauma many have experienced and putting the lie to the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty:

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Our lamp has burned out.