It's a pipeline that begins with the arrests of immigrants – some are legal residents and others are undocumented – by the police, flows through Rikers Island where they should be kept until they their day in court, but ends tragically in federal detention in such states as Texas and Louisiana and ultimately in deportation to people's respective birthplaces.

It's about time that Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has consistently laid out a case for a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants and widening of the doors so that more foreign workers can come in on the basis of need, should put an abrupt and justifiable end to this cruel and unjust treatment of people.

What's so difficult to understand is how a City such as ours can become enmeshed in a federal scheme whose sole purpose is to get rid of people who have been arrested, regardless of guilt or innocence.

The federal policy in question is called "Criminal Alien Program" and its tentacles reach into law enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local government levels, co-opting them as partners in a hurtful deportation policy that is splitting families apart and victimizing immigrants in the process.

Deploring, quite succinctly and forcefully, this atrocious approach to immigration, Scott Stringer, Manhattan Borough President, complained loud and clear that "for more than a decade City law enforcement officials have given the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency the names of all arrestees, regardless of the crime they are accused of committing and regardless of whether they are convicted."

Once arrested and held at Rikers Island, one of the world's largest jails, the deportation clocks begins to tick.

For starters, ICE routinely requests and gets the green light for immigrants to be released to federal custody.

Next move is to transfer them to Louisiana or Texas, hundreds of miles away from their relatives in the New York area who wish to visit them.

Then, there is the issue of poor accommodations.

A feature of the federal detention centers is the lack of adequate health care for those who are ill.

Between 2003 and last year, more than 100 people have died in the centers, an alarming statistic by any measure.

At least three of the fatalities involved immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa.

Stringer's eloquent denunciation of the policy and Congresswoman Yvette Clarke's demand that City Hall should put an end to the abuse of people's rights to due process should be enough for the Mayor to end it.

For a country which claims to be so virtuous when it comes to the embrace of democracy and the protection of individual rights, this appalling situation cries out for urgent attention.

Another telling figure is the 80 percent of the detainees who, in Stringer's words "have little or no access to lawyers and no effective way to representation in a surreal and confusing system."

But there are other reasons to change course. At the top of the list is New York City reputation as the City of immigrants and a beacon that guards the rights of the foreign born in our midst. That image is being unnecessarily and willfully sullied by the wrong-headed approach.

Next is the break-up of immigrant families. Dispatching an immigrant to a far off corner of the United States puts him or her out of reach to those who love them and are interested in their welfare.

A sensible solution is for the City to end its collaboration with the federal government on this immigration and deportation nightmare.

Other cities, Santa Clara in California and Arlington in Virginia, have taken that bold step.

If they can do so, New York can follow suit with alacrity. It boggles the mind the City is so timid in the face of the fed's aggressive approach to deportation.

President Obama can also deal with the matter at its roots. He can reduce the emphasis on deportation on humanitarian grounds and that can pay handsome political dividends in the 2012 presidential election.

By taking a softer stand, he will be able to convince millions of Hispanic and Black immigrant families that he is concerned about them.

The Hispanic vote, in particular, can be crucial in many states with large numbers of electoral votes.

They can make a difference in Democratic efforts to hold onto their slim majority in the Senate as well.

What's being requested of the Mayor and the President is a shift in strategy that shields innocent victims and their families from the abusive system which has so far served to inflict pain while avoiding due process. That isn't too much to ask