Over the last few years, I have been writing about the Fifty Shades of Grey ICE detention center gleefully supervised by the Sheriff of Bristol County, Thomas Hodgson, on the South Coast of Massachusetts at the Bristol County House of Corrections in Dartmouth.

A quick perusal of those past blog posts shows a man enjoying the power of his position, acting out his xenophobic attitudes and white supremacist beliefs on those he refers to as “criminal illegal aliens” to present them as monsters who may very well only be in his detention center for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and are otherwise law abiding and gainfully employed people.

This had finally exploded when Hodgson denied his detainees their civil and human rights and endangered them physically when his macho-man actions created the riot on May 1, 2020, that an investigation showed was entirely instigated by him, a conclusion based on evidence and interviews which contradicted his story that the detainees had attacked him and his deputies when they entered the detention center in riot gear, employing excessive weaponry and force, and using unmuzzled dogs.

In spite of his very creative defenses that ranged from his being a much-maligned uber-patriot and his being the only one who can fix it when it comes to unproductive incarceration and Covid treatment to his mantra that the only people who claimed that he is not doing right by his detainees were those who did not like Trump and his adoring him, ICE will be cancelling all contracts with him.

There will be no more 287(g) contract with Sheriff Hodgson that had included training deputies at the taxpayers’ expense to work as government agents when they were hired to work for the people of the county and turning the Bristol County House of Correction into a federal ICE detention center.

Groups like Bristol County for Correctional Justice, an ad hoc committee of concerned citizens, the FANG Collective, a direct action organization, Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (AMOR), Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network (BIJAN) Connecticut Bail Fund, and a number of legal defense organizations and individual attorneys have been working for this since  at least when Sheriff Hodgson volunteered his inmates to help build Trump’s wall and his frequent appearances over the last few years at white-supremacist and anti-immigrant events. They demanded that he not be in charge of a facility that housed the people he politically demonized.

Attitudes influence behavior and he was in a position of authority that dealt with punishment.

The Biden administration calls this an “important first step” in a broader review of ICE detention centers.

The cancelling of the Bristol County ICE detention Center’s contract with ICE was ordered by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

One of the reasons to close Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s facility was because his detention rosters have shrunk to the point that they are “no longer operationally necessary.” 

After his refusal to be reasonable in the early months of the Covid 19 pandemic resulted in court actions calling for him to reduce his numbers by following the rules and release those who reasons for detention were weak, he was left with only 7 detainees out of nearly 200 he should be housing.

Sheriff Hodgson has also been the subject of a federal investigation for complaints of abuses against immigrants, and Mayorkas said,

 “we will not tolerate the mistreatment of individuals in civil immigration detention or substandard conditions of detention.”

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“We have an obligation to make lasting improvements to our civil immigration detention system. This marks an important first step to realizing that goal. DHS detention facilities and the treatment of individuals in those facilities will be held to our health and safety standards. Where we discover they fall short, we will continue to take action as we are doing today.”

As a quick reminder, what Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson has going against him are the findings of the report on the May 1, 2020 events at the C. Carlos Carreiro Immigration Detention Center , Unit B, released by the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General Civil Rights Division on December 19, 2020:

” The Bristol County Sheriff Office’s calculated use of force included the use of a variety of less-lethal but dangerous weapons— including a flash bang grenade, pepper-ball launchers, pepper spray canisters, anti-riot shields, and canines—against detainees who had exhibited calm and nonviolent behavior for at least an hour before this operation. The BCSO deployed these weapons both indiscriminately upon entry and also specifically against particular detainees who were not combative, assaultive, or otherwise actively resisting staff. Informing our conclusion that the BCSO’s use of force was excessive.”

“The BCSO violated the civil rights of the detainees …… by using excessive force against the ICE B detainees and by acting with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious injury or harm to the detainees and their health.”

And, because,

“Our investigation revealed that the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office violated the rights of detainees by using excessive force and by seriously risking their health and safety. This callous disregard for the well-being of immigration detainees is unacceptable and must be addressed through the significant reforms we outline in our report.”

The sheriff’s response to the report might have been his total rejection of it and questioning the state Attorney General’s right to produce a report and issue recommendations for improvement, Mayorkas saw it differently saying, there is

“ample evidence that the Detention Center’s treatment of detained individuals and the conditions of detention are unacceptable.”

There was also a class-action lawsuit alleging unsafe conditions during the pandemic that had U.S. District Judge William Young barring the sheriff from accepting new detainees.

Although the Sheriff will bray about the importance of his detention center to the strength of America, ICE acting director Tae Johnson said in a statement,

 “Withdrawing from the Bristol agreement will not impair or in any way diminish ICE operations.”

When it comes to ICE involvement, “Bye, Felicia.”

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