A congressional mandate requires that the U.S. hold 34,000 unauthorized immigrants in detention every day, for an annual cost of $2 billion. (Unsurprisingly, gobs of money paid to for-profit prison corporations are involved.)

Detention Watch Network, in partnership with MIT’s Codesign Studio, brings to life the human impact of all those nights detainees spent locked up with a new website Bedtime Stories, lauched today. Altogether it adds up to more than 55 million nights since the quota was put in place–nights when parents might have been tucking their children into bed, or readying for the next workday have instead been spent behind bars.

The website pulls out personal accounts from immigrant detainees of their detention experiences, like this one from a detainee in Arizona’s Pinal County Jail: 

"The only way to have a visit with our families is by way of a televised screen and a telephone[…] which makes our stay here more depressing and affects us psychologically, since in circumstances such as these, we need all the support of our families."

Visit Bedtime Stories for more.