Although the Sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts, Thomas Hodgson, claims that any criticism of him is politically motivated, with the biggest criticism being his having a contract with ICE to house detainees and speaking in the most insulting terms about those immigrants in that facility and their resultant treatment.

Taking encouragement for his anti-immigrant attitude, speech, and actions from Trump whose attention he craves, he refers to detainees and potential detainees as “criminal illegal aliens” even though few in his facility have committed any serious crime with the vast majority only guilty of entering the country improperly, which is a civil misdemeanor, and characterizes unspecified “criminal illegal aliens” as a threat roaming the streets endangering the good people of the county.

It all plays into his using the fear of “others” to inflate his chosen image as a tough law and order, super (yet selectively) patriotic guy protecting the good people from the monster in the closet that no one has seen, yet he insists is there. They are there, you just don’t see them, and they are clever enough to hide any evidence of their actions or existence.

His anti-immigrant bigotry is on going and not hidden.

Sheriff Thomas Hodgson joined FAIR’s board of advisors in 2017 after having announced at his swearing in as the reelected sheriff that he was volunteering his inmates to help build the wall on the Southern Border. The anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform was founded by white nationalist John Tanton and is known for demonizing immigrants.

In 2012, Hodgson had accepted an invitation from FAIR to participate in the annual “border school” in El Paso, Texas, which brings together sheriffs from around the country to engage in workshops led by anti-immigrant groups and local law enforcement. 

He made an impression there as FAIR stated,

“Sheriff Hodgson of Bristol County, Massachusetts, was so impressed with the ‘school,’ he signed on to host an all-day training session in his jurisdiction.”

He wanted to introduce the fear of immigrants to a place where there was none.

He attended FAIR’s Hold Their Feet to the Fire event which brings together anti-immigrant elected officials, radio hosts, and anti-immigrant activists for two days of broadcasting nativist rhetoric, and it was at one of these that he said that arrest warrants should be issued to elected officials who supported Sanctuary Cities.

The sheriff’s opposition to Sanctuary Cities or any iteration of them has been a constant with him speaking against any attempt anywhere in the country to limit law enforcement cooperation with ICE unless the person was convicted of a serious crime.

In 2018, he denounced proposed legislation that would provide a form of sanctuary relief for undocumented immigrants in Massachusetts effectively making it a sanctuary State.

A few years previous to this he invited sheriffs to join him at his anti-immigrant event in Washington, claiming that “25 people in the U.S. are killed each day by illegal immigrants,” a debunked claim even when he cited it, and one for which he could not cite a source, It just sounded scary especially coming from a rough, tough, badass sheriff whose actual job is being the administrator of a local government facility.

When a court directed him to release some detainees whose only offense was coming here improperly in order to thin the detainee facility population during the COVID 19 pandemic to possibly prevent an outbreak in a confined environment, he did so because he had to, but he also published his “Prisoner Release Alert System” that listed alleged crimes committed by immigrants who were released. There is no way of knowing if this was an actual list of actual crimes committed by these people, or just a generic list of serious crimes especially as the court’s directive did not include detainees who had committed such crimes. He claimed this release freed people to roam the streets victimizing the good American people.

The sheriff was not quiet in his opposition to the “Gang of Eight” comprehensive immigration package, S 744, signing on to a letter with a number of other sheriffs who had worked closely with anti-immigrant groups in opposition to it that said,

 “The degree to which this legislation tolerates both past and future criminal activities ensures legalization and a path to citizenship for many criminal aliens and gang members currently residing in the United States,”

and being part of a press event organized by then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.

 He, with the help of FAIR, organized sheriffs in Washington, D.C. to speak out against President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, and using a personal email account to communicate with FAIR and not his Bristol County Sheriff’s Office email although he wrote as the sheriff..

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Twice he has been invited to the White House ,once to participate in a roundtable discussion on immigration, and once to participate in President Trump’s veto of legislation designed to overturn his declared national emergency regarding an increase in asylum seekers coming from Central America.

Last year Hodgson held a “Badges and Angels” press conference about immigrants killing people, something, apparently, citizens don’t do, and was able to present Trump with a FAIR sponsored plaque that he considered a “great honor.”

As he had said in a 2015 press conference to air his opposition to the Obama Administration’s exercise of prosecutorial discretion to prioritize immigration enforcement,

 “It is unconscionable that after spending resources to investigate and apprehend criminal illegal aliens and remove them from our streets that the federal government would order sheriffs to release them back into our neighborhoods to victimize our citizens, legal residents, and their families once again.”

Never ignoring the opportunity to bask in the presence of Trump and be seen and photographed doing so, when the National Sheriffs’ Association’s announced a crowdfunding effort to help pay for the border wall, Hodgson presented Trump with the plaque stating,

“You and your administration have given law enforcement its footing back and given law enforcement the support and tools necessary to protect the people in our neighborhoods, communities and our entire nation.”

To me, anyway, his most egregious example of his politicizing that which he claims should not be politicized, is that, without a word to his parish priest, he emailed Stephen Miller at the White House to tell him that his church had cards among the various informational pamphlets on a table at the back of the church advising immigrants, here legally or otherwise, how to interact with law enforcement and ICE if they are in a situation that might arise which, if not handled correctly, could escalate. This was in the beginning days of the Trump administration when immigrants were very fearful and uncertain. He went on to tell Miller that he would investigate other churches and businesses to see if any supply similar information and report on those.

This email interaction was kept secret and only came to light as a result of an email dump in response to a FOIA request on an unrelated issue.

This is the person who couldn’t wait to sign a contract to work with ICE in a county with a huge immigrant population going back to its earlier years as a manufacturing leader.

This is the person who shows up to join the Portuguese Festival Parade that celebrates the pride of local immigrants in their ancestors and cultures with his contingent made up of the ICE supplied vehicles easily recognized by the people along the route for what they were because of the huge lettering identifying them.

This is the man who, because the Massachusetts Attorney General issued a report that determined,

“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,”

during and around the “riot” at the ICE detention center on May 1, 2020, should not be in charge of a facility that houses immigrants he considers, extra-judicially, to be “criminal illegal aliens”.

And so, the report contained the logical recommendation based on all the above that the Department of Homeland Security terminate its partnership with the Bristol County Sheriff Office or that the Massachusetts General Court enact legislation to that effect, either way preventing the Bristol County Sheriff from housing immigration detainees or participating in federal immigration enforcement.

This will not sit well with the Junior G-Man and Western Sheriff wannabe.

Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren along with Representative Bill Keating responded to the AG’s report saying in a joint statement,

“The thorough investigation by the Office of Attorney General Healey compiled significant evidence that the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office violated the civil rights of immigrants detained at the facility. We agree with the report’s recommendation that the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office should not be engaged in immigrant detention.

Every person – regardless of their immigration status and regardless of where they are living – deserves to feel safe, to have access to due process under the law, to be treated with dignity, and to have their rights protected. We led our colleagues in calling on the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General and the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to conduct a federal investigation of these events. We look forward to the findings of that additional investigation, which we expect to help determine accountability for this disturbing incident and to offer further recommendations about how such events can be avoided in the future.” 

Ironically, as he condemns those who want to close his ICE detention facility with his all my way or no way policies, practices, and public statements based on facts he so easily ignores or politically relabels to dismiss more easily, Sheriff Thomas Hodgson of Bristol County MA has gone out of his way to show by example the dangers of ICE detention as an outlet for the bigotry of the person in charge and why it should be shut down.