Many people held in suspicion of violating immigration laws may already feel like a stranger in a strange land, but the treatment of those awaiting deportation adds to the pressure.

The Obama administration is looking to transform the highly-criticized detention system, proposing changes that would send non-violent and non-criminal immigrant detainees to more suitable facilities other than local jails and private prisons.

The initiatives would help to improve upon a system that houses an estimated average of over 300,000 detainees each year, held under conditions that are often inhumane — from mistreatment of minors to deaths due to a lack of proper medical care.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has presented several reform ideas, including holding detainees in converted hotels, nursing homes, and other residential facilities or placing them in electronic ankle bracelets for surveillance and monitoring.

Some of the changes are expected to reduce costs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has nearly $2.5 billion in the budget for detention and deportation. Proposed housing alternatives to detention can be much cheaper than the present system — costing only $14 a day per person, compared to over $100 a day for the jails under contract.

Another area of concern is the disparity between immigrant detention and criminal custody — in a criminal case the right to legal council is assured, while for many detainees a standard needs to be established for obtaining access to due process. Immigrant rights advocates are also pushing the federal government to make legally-binding standards for immigrants to have recreation time, family visits and legal materials available to them.

A request for proposals to build two model detention centers — one in California — will be issued within a year, according to John Morton, assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He pledged to create a more centralized system with increased government accountability, and a plan to create a system to better identify medical issues and to help manage care. In addition, officials are developing an online system to help families find their relatives. This is part of an ambitious plan to transform the penal network into what Mr. Morton calls, "a truly civil detention system."

"This is a system that encompasses many different types of detainees, not all of whom need to be held in prison-like circumstances or jail-like circumstances, which not only may be unnecessary but more expensive," Ms. Napolitano said. "Serious felons deserve to be in the prison model," she adds, "but there are others. There are women. There are children."