Dave Pierre and Families For Freedom Executive Director Abraham Paulos were at the Democracy Now! studios on November 13 to discuss the injustices behind mandatory detention. Dave tells his story after 1,144 days of immigration detention.

Ivan Stobert was in many ways the ideal immigrant. In 2006, he traveled from Moldova to the United States on a visa. While here, he fell in love and in 2008 married a U.S. citizen. He became a permanent legal resident, bought a house in the Atlanta area and started a cleaning business. Ivan Stobert, a 25 year-old Moldovan national, speaks to his lawyer from his home in Atlanta. Despite holding a green card, he says he spent nearly a year in the Etowah County Detention Center last fall after accidentally checking the "U.S. citizen" box on a motorcycle license application. “Finally I made my dream,” Stobert told NBC News. “I buy my house, I have my business. I thought, ‘Wow, I love America!’” But the love affair ended in December 2010, when the slight 25-year-old found himself locked up indefinitely in the Etowah County Detention Center in northeast Alabama, charged with an aggravated felony and facing deportation.