The Department of Homeland Security recently announced that it was terminating contracts it holds with the Bristol County sheriff to house federal immigration detainees and participate in immigration enforcement.
The decision comes in the wake of a report issued late last year by the office of Attorney General Maura Healey finding that Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson had violated the civil rights of federal immigration detainees during the course of responding to a disturbance last May and recommending that DHS end its relationship with Hodgson.
That incident allegedly started with the non-violent refusal of 10 Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees to consent to COVID-19 testing and isolation, but then escalated into a conflict between staff and detainees.
The AG’s Office found that, while some of the detainees acted in a disruptive way during the conflict, detainees had been calm and nonviolent for an hour when staff executed a “calculated use of force,” which included a flash bang grenade, pepper spray, anti-riot shields and canines.
The report found that the sheriff and his staff violated the civil rights of the detainees in their use of “excessive and disproportionate” force based on the totality of the circumstances and by acting with “deliberate indifference” to a significant risk of serious harm to the health of several detainees.
Hodgson, a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies who famously offered to send inmates to help build the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, has long faced criticism for his treatment of detainees.
Detainees are entitled to due process and humane treatment, which the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office is demonstrably unwilling to provide.
He was a defendant in a federal class action brought by Lawyers for Civil Rights last year at the beginning of the pandemic, seeking the release of immigration detainees being held in the Bristol County House of Corrections and the C. Carlos Carreiro Immigration Detention Center.
The plaintiffs alleged that Hodgson and federal officials resisted repeated pleas to consider detention alternatives, even for the most vulnerable immigrants with medical conditions that heightened their risk of infection, sickness and death.
U.S. District Court Judge William Young subsequently issued a preliminary injunction, finding that Hodgson’s office had likely been deliberately indifferent to the welfare of the detainees and that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in showing that their rights had been violated.
In the letter ordering ICE to terminate its contracts with Hodgson’s office, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas cited “unacceptable” treatment of detainees and said that the federal government would not tolerate “substandard conditions of detention.”
Hodgson’s treatment of immigration detainees as the pandemic worsened last year, coupled with the results of the AG’s investigation, make clear that he should no longer be involved in immigration enforcement. Detainees are entitled to due process and humane treatment, which the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office is demonstrably unwilling to provide. Canceling its contract with ICE was the right decision.
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May 29, 2021 at 06:24PM
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Canceling Bristol County ICE contract is right call - Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly
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