Speaking at a hearing earlier this month to discuss the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office’s (BCSO) collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the arrest and detention of undocumented immigrants, Sheriff Tom Hodgson described his targets as criminals responsible for the most heinous crimes — murder, rape, narcotics trafficking. But, as usual, the sheriff could offer no evidence to support the charge. Instead, he ridiculed and humiliated citizens who challenged him.

About 25 people, local activists, public defenders and lawyers, and some from the Cape and Providence, attended. Sheriff Hodgson who had invited citizens to discuss his department’s participation with ICE under a program known as 287(g), was flanked by Todd Lyons, Deputy Field Office Director, ICE Boston; William Sullivan, 287(g) Program Director, ICE Boston; Steven Souza, Superintendent of Security, BCSO; and Liunetty Couto, Director of Deportation Services, BCSO.

Five minutes into the hearings Sheriff Hodgson launched into his customary scary talking points about dangerous immigrants, asserting, “I took an oath to protect you,” claiming that inmates in his jails are there “because they committed a crime,” though fewer than half the prisoners have been convicted. Most inmates are there simply because they cannot post bail.

The sheriff asserted that 95 percent of violent crimes, the drug trade, and sex trafficking were committed by illegal aliens. When challenged for evidence, he attacked the questioner personally, declaring the man couldn’t possibly know the “real story” because he was not in law enforcement. Another questioner, a lawyer, received a similar condescending response.

Even the ICE officers acknowledged that Hodgson’s “detainees” were often guilty of lesser offenses such as operating a vehicle without a license.

Attendees objected to the panel’s claims that, before 287(g), dangerous criminals were frequently released from jail. Exactly what type of criminals had been released? Neither the sheriff nor the ICE officers could provide a substantive answer. One questioner complained about the panel’s use of anecdotes and misleading statistics, and that no data actually substantiated claims that a majority of detainees had been picked up for violent crimes. An ICE officer promised to get back to her with some data.

While the sheriff gave the impression he had sweeping powers to deploy local resources to help ICE, one ICE officer cautioned that, with the abandonment of the 287(g) Task Force model, local law enforcement can no longer conduct raids but is limited to investigating and holding prison inmates.

Of particular concern was that Massachusetts taxpayers pay for the sheriff’s decision to work for the Trump administration. Hodgson dug in, telling attendees he was not going to apologize for protecting the public. He said being elected justified his personal decision to partner with ICE. He rejected the notion that voters elected him to do a specific job — running the county jails. And the sheriff tried to downplay 287(g) costs. Both Hodgson and ICE insisted that ICE paid for all training, lodging and travel for personnel from BCSO during training. But this is simply not true.

The BCSO’s Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with ICE states that Massachusetts taxpayers pay for “personnel expenses, […] local transportation, […] salaries and benefits, including overtime, of all of its personnel being trained […] and of those personnel performing the regular functions of the participating BCSO personnel while they are receiving training. The BCSO will cover the costs of all BCSO personnel’s travel, housing, and per diem affiliated with the training required for participation in this MOA.”

Several questioned whether ICE knew about various abuses at the prisons. Attendees challenged Hodgson’s claim that his facilities were rated in the top ten percent of American prisons when so many complaints have been filed against them. The sheriff refused to acknowledge the highest prison suicide rates in the Commonwealth, class-action lawsuits for human rights abuses, and repeated citations for violations of health and safety regulations.

Hodgson denounced a recent lawsuit by Prisoner’s Legal Services over abuse of solitary confinement and made derogatory comments about the plaintiffs. He insisted that those accusing him of mismanaging his jail, treating inmates cruelly, failing to properly oversee psychological treatment of prisoners, or dealing with the suicide rate, were either “politically motivated” or acting out of venality or pecuniary interest.

When asked about violations of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s Lunn ruling, which constrains ICE detentions, Hodgson feigned ignorance. One attendee refreshed the sheriff’s memory, mentioning an illegally-detained inmate’s name. But Hodgson waved that one away as well. It was surprising to hear a Republican, from the party of state rights, claim, “federal law supersedes state law.”

Hodgson says he took an oath to “protect” us all. But he seems more dedicated to protecting himself and the extrajudicial activities he has undertaken in service to a personal agenda. The question citizens of Bristol County might reasonably ask is — who will protect us from Sheriff Hodgson and the cost of his misfeasance?

UPDATED 1/21/2018 12:00.

On September 24, 2009, Suffolk Superior Court Judge John C. Cratsley ruled in a class-action lawsuit that Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson was housing prisoners under cruel and unusual conditions. According to Prison Legal News, “originally filed in 1998, the suit alleged that Hodgson was improperly triple-bunking prisoners at the Ash Street Jail, a pre-Civil War-era facility. The lawsuit also claimed that prisoners were being forced to sleep on the floor in ‘boats’ — portable bunks — and in common areas. The lawsuit was amended in 2004 to add a claim concerning Hodgson’s practice of ‘dry-celling’ prisoners at the Dartmouth House of Correction. ‘Dry-celled’ prisoners did not have access to a toilet.” Nevertheless, the prison capacity in Bristol County has fluctuated between 300% and 384% of the capacity the prisons were designed for.

Over the years, Tom Hodgson has been involved in numerous lawsuits, but conditions rarely seem to improve at facilities under his control. Among the frequent allegations — abuse of prisoners, violations of a State Judicial Court ruling barring unconstitutional ICE detentions, starving and denial of medical treatment, and filthy conditions in both the Dartmouth and New Bedford lockups.

In the last two years, inspections of the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office ICE Facility conducted by Nicholas Gale, a Massachusetts Environmental Health Inspector, have turned up repeat violations of health and safety standards: see reports on April 19, 2016 and November 21, 2016 and April 25, 2017. Likewise, the Women’s Center in North Dartmouth is not in compliance either: see this report on November 16, 2015. Conditions are the worst at the Ash Street Jail: see reports on June 5, 2013 and June 12, 2015 and January 12, 2016. You can download all these reports as a single PDF.

Each includes the following warning:

“This facility does not comply with the Department’s Regulations cited above. In accordance with 105 CMR 451.404, please submit a plan of correction within 10 working days of receipt of this notice, indicating the specific corrective steps to be taken, a timetable for such steps, and the date by which correction will be achieved. The plan should be signed by the Superintendent or Administrator and submitted to my attention, at the address listed above.”

Still, not one federal, state, or municipal agency has ever made the sheriff account for these violations. And it’s not for lack of reporting. Each is dutifully reported to a slew of bureaucrats — Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and New Bedford Departments of Health, both the Commissioner and Director of the Department of Corrections, various policy units within the state government, the governor, the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office itself, and clerks of both the Massachusetts House and Senate.

But nothing.

Countless newspaper articles have been written about the dungeon-like environment at the Ash Street Jail, the epidemic of suicides in Bristol County jails, and the cruelty of the sheriff.

Still nothing.

Human beings are being warehoused in inhuman, unsanitary conditions.

Does anybody care?

“No mans person shall be restrained or imprisoned by any Authority whatsoever, before the law hath sentenced him thereto, If he can put in sufficient securitie, bayle or mainprise, for his appearance, and good behaviour in the meane time, unlesse it be in Crimes Capital, and Contempts in open Court, and in such cases where some expresse act of Court doth allow it.” — Body of Liberties (1641), the oldest codification of Massachusetts Colonial law.

Yesterday two members of BCCJ attended an informational meeting on the Massachusetts Bail Fund at the UMASS Law School in Dartmouth. The meeting was organized by Jesse Purvis, National Lawyers Guild, UMASS Law Chapter.

Jessica Thrall, a federal public defender and member of the Massachusetts Bail Fund’s Steering Committee, spoke first. She outlined one stark injustice of the criminal justice system — that a poor person unable to post bail is locked away in miserable conditions and lacks the ability to consult and communicate freely with lawyers and family.

Prisoners under these circumstances are often needlessly warehoused for months in jail at considerable cost. When finally offered a plea for “time served,” they will often accept the plea deal simply to escape the abusive conditions — even though they are innocent. Thus, for the poor, and particularly for people of color, the criminal justice system creates a grinding conveyor belt from poverty to “criminality” — even when the accused is actually innocent. And once the indigent accused has been systemically transformed into a “criminal” more injustice awaits him/her in the workplace and in a probation system that can hound him/her for decades.

Thrall mentioned the recent case of Jahmal Brangan, who sat in the Hampden County jail for three and a half years because he could not post bail. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled last August in the case of Brangan v. Commonwealth, 082517 MASC, SJC-12232, in which Brangan’s “bail order violated his right to due process because the judge failed to give adequate consideration to his financial resources, and set bail in an amount so far beyond his financial means that it resulted in his long-term detention pending resolution of his case.”

The justices ruled that “In setting the amount of bail for a defendant, a judge must consider the defendant’s financial resources but is not required to set bail in an amount the defendant can afford if other relevant considerations weigh more heavily than the defendant’s ability to prove the necessary security for his appearance at trial.” It was a small victory, but now the door is open to more reasonable bail amounts.

Massachusetts has a system in which defendants post cash bail in court (and pay a clerk a nonrefundable $40 fee for the privilege). Bail bondsmen cannot legally operate in the Commonwealth.

The Massachusetts Bail Fund began in Suffolk and Middlesex counties, but has been expanded to Essex, Norfolk, Worcester, Plymouth and Bristol. The Fund provides up to $500 in bail to defendants who are already represented by a public defender and can prove indigence. To date the Fund has bailed out about 700 defendants, and of those about 60% of the cases were immediately dismissed. When asked about defaults — defendants running and causing the Fund to forfeit its $500 — Thrall noted that this has only happened six times — 6 out of 700 — a statistic Thrall says should make the Commonwealth think twice about requiring any amount of bail for minor offenses.

Attendees wanted to know how the process works — and it works only because of the thirty or so volunteers who do the thankless work of actually bailing out indigent people. Attendees had a chance to hear from a remarkable couple about the process.

Jan and Chuck Bichsel are two of four volunteers in Bristol County. They have been volunteering for about seven months with the Mass Bail Fund and have handled about a dozen “releases,” which play out something like this: (1) volunteer(s) receive an email from the Bail Fund coordinator informing them of the release and the jail (Ash Street or BCSO), contact information, telephone numbers, and public defender; (2) the volunteers post the $500 (or lesser amount) personally at the prison, which may entail appearing in the evening, spending up to six hours waiting for prison staff to respond; (3) coordinating with family to pick up the released individual, or even driving him home if the family has no transportation; (4) appearing at a court hearing many months (or years) later in order to recover the bail money for the Fund.

Volunteers are not personally responsible for bail funds. Money “up-fronted” by volunteers is quickly reimbursed by the Fund. Releases, at least in Bristol County, are handled only during the first two weeks of every month (which means that the earliest release for many follows two weeks of incarceration).

It takes a thoughtful, patient person to do this work. Jan Bichsel joked that she might look like the “crocheting type” but that it took every bit of patience and focus to work with a prison system designed to crush people (maybe she is the crocheting type after all). The couple invited prospective volunteers to “ride along” with them before deciding if this work was for them.

To contribute to the bail fund, go to https://www.massbailfund.org/donate.html

For more information about volunteering, contact the Massachusetts Bail Fund at information@massbailfund.org or complete the online form at https://www.massbailfund.org/contact.html.

In a front-page piece by Curt Brown (“Mentally ill inmates sue Sheriff Hodgson”) in today’s print version of the Standard Times, Bristol County Sheriff Hodgson disputes charges in a lawsuit brought against him — allegations similar to those BCCJ heard from former inmates whom we interviewed:

“It’s a frivolous lawsuit,” Hodgson told the Standard-Times. The sheriff also questioned the timing of the suit since the state legislature is now considering a sweeping criminal justice reform package.

Hodgson claims his facility has “never received a deficiency on any inspection of its mental or physical health care” and that “the Bristol County House of Corrections ranks in the top 10 percent of all correctional facilities in the nation.”

That’s not for quality — but it’s certainly in the top 10 percent of county prison suicides.

But Tom Hodgson didn’t acknowledge that he’s lost a number of suits for abusive treatment of prisoners. In 2009, for instance, the sheriff was accused of housing prisoners in cruel and unusual conditions — and he lost the case.

If Hodgson’s weasel words are true — that inspections do not reveal deficiencies related to abuse — then the state had better start conducting thorough inspections.

For the sheriff a good defense requires dispensing with facts of public record. “The lawsuit is full of misinformation and flat-out lies,” spokesman Jonathan Darling told the Standard Times. “Shame on Prisoner Legal Services for filing such a ridiculous lawsuit and wasting taxpayer resources.”

Yet it’s hardly “ridiculous” when Hodgson has a history of abusing prisoners. And the sheriff wasn’t worrying about waste when he squandered millions of dollars in taxpayer resources pursuing a losing case all the way to the Supreme Court. In fact, wasting taxpayer money — like the suicides in his jails — stand out among Massachusetts county jails. Which is why we are asking for thorough investigations.

Three neighboring counties in the bottom right quadrant of the Commonwealth have Republican sheriffs in otherwise Democratic districts. It could have something to do with demographics — or maybe just neglect and Boston-centric politics. But it is surely a sign that not all is well with a party that habitually runs weak sheriff candidates — or none at all.

Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings recently joined fellow Republicans, Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson and Plymouth County Sheriff Joe McDonald, in signing a 287(g) agreement with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Under such agreements ICE permits prison officials to volunteer as federal immigration agents. The Trump administration, which strongly promotes the program, sees 287(g) as a tool in its larger mass-deportation strategy. And the Republican sheriffs know it. “The president said our role is probably the most critical because we know the players in our communities and we know how to find them,” Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson said.

You wouldn’t know it from Hodgson’s many statements on right-wing talk radio, but 287(g) is not very popular — by any stretch of the imagination. At present ICE has agreements in only 18 states, and with only 60 law enforcement agencies. Massachusetts joins Arizona, California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Ohio — and the entire South — as participants. Now generally limited to a “jails” model because of previous abuses in the older “task force” and “hybrid” models, 287(g) agreements have a long history of civil rights abuses. For instance, in 2011 Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s agreement with ICE was terminated for civil rights abuses.

These ICE agreements impose costs of running a federal law enforcement program on state government and redeploy state corrections employees as federal agents. Sheriffs who enter into the agreements do so out of personal politics — not as part of their job description. And many local police forces find 287(g) programs undermine community trust.

According to the American Immigration Council, ICE agreements with local sheriffs are not properly supervised by ICE. Both the Boston Globe and the New York Times have featured articles on the lack of local accountability for county sheriffs — sheriffs who often operate as spokesmen for the Trump administration and anti-immigrant groups like FAIR and CIS. Understandably, there is growing resistance to 287(g) programs and a desire to slap some limits on them. And a lot is happening recently.

On January 3rd the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates ratified a resolution opposing the 287(g) program in Barnstable County — although voters had no choice in entering into the agreement in the first place.

On January 8th at 7PM at the Falmouth Public Library county residents will have a chance to discuss 287(g) agreements and learn about the Safe Communities Act — state legislation which puts some limits on a sheriff’s discretionary powers regarding ICE.

And at the Bristol County prison on January 11th at 6PM county residents will have a similar opportunity to express concerns about the 287(g) program — see http://www.bcso-ma.us/ for details of the public hearing. And do your homework if you plan on attending.

Barnstable County’s Sheriff has the dubious distinction of recently joining Bristol and Plymouth county sheriffs in signing 287(g) agreements with ICE. Dartmouth’s Sheriff Tom Hodgson will be hosting an annual 287(g) Steering Committee meeting on January 11th at 6PM. The meeting is open to the public and feedback is requested.

Along these same lines — on January 3, 2018 the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates held a public hearing to vote on a proposal by Provincetown Delegate Brian O’Malley (County Resolution 17-10) to not support the County Sheriff’s pursuit of an ICE 287(g) agreement, though the agreement is already in place. Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings answered questions on the 287(g) program he just signed with ICE, then left before listening to the community he supposedly serves. County Delegate Christopher Kanaga (Orleans) asked that two members of the press be permitted to report on the testimony but the request was denied for “fire code” reasons. Fortunately there was a recording of the meeting:

One member of the Cape Cod Coalition for Safe Communities offered a summary of the proceedings:

While you might find our testimony interesting, even more interesting to me are the questions asked by the delegates after the sheriff’s initial presentation and the comments the delegates made after the hearing was adjourned and the business meeting convened to consider Brian [O’Malley’s] proposal. Although the weighted vote was against the proposal, the majority of the delegates voted in favor of it. Their reactions were serious and thoughtful — we have many allies who share our reservations about the sheriff’s intentions. My impression was that he left immediately after his portion of the hearing was done. If that’s true, I think that not staying to listen to the comments of the public or the delegates was arrogant and disrespectful, not the behavior I expect from a public servant.

The first two hours of the Assembly hearings featured the sheriff first presenting his case, followed by questions from the delegates. (There’s one delegate from each of the fifteen towns, but their votes are weighted depending on population.) This all started because, before the sheriff’s 287(g) application was approved, Brian O’Malley, the delegate from P’town, presented a proposal on December 6 asking the Assembly to vote not to support the application. Somewhere between 20-30 of us showed up, some just to show support by our presence for Brian’s resolution but some of us to talk. The Speaker freaked out, adjourned the meeting, and then put together this public hearing. Over 100 people showed up last night. Out of the 23 speakers, only three spoke in favor of the sheriff’s new powers.

The question now is: What can we do to help move the Safe Communities Act out of committee and make this issue disappear? There will be a meeting on January 8th in Falmouth to discuss precisely that:

https://www.facebook.com/events/210192542883146/

On Thursday morning the SouthCoast Chamber of Commerce had Bristol County sheriff Tom Hodgson and Helena DaSilva Hughes to breakfast at the Wamsutta Club to discuss immigration. During his presentation the sheriff cited questionable statistics from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), claiming that illegal immigration costs taxpayers $116 billion a year. The CATO Institute calls FAIR’s new study “fatally flawed” and “even more sloppy” than their previous one.

It would have more appropriate for Hodgson to speak about opioids, recidivism, or suicides. He actually knows something about the latter since his own jail accounts for a quarter of all county prison suicides. But there he was – again – acting as a spokesman for FAIR’s white supremacist immigration policies and conveniently avoiding trouble in his own backyard.

In 2015 Tom Hodgson appeared with Dennis Michael Lynch at an Islamophobic venue in Stoughton which had previously hosted Dutch neo-fascist Geert Wilders. Lynch is an Islamophobe, a white supremacist, a supporter of the Constitutional Sheriff Movement and of sovereign citizen Cliven Bundy, about whom he made a film.

That same year Hodgson appeared with a representative of the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) at the Fisherman’s Club in New Bedford. Despite the name, FAIR has little to do with reform. Instead, its goal is assuring White Anglo-Saxon dominance. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, FAIR has links to white supremacists and eugenicists. Its founder, John Tanton, wrote to one eugenicist: “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”

In 2016 the Sheriff was one of three speakers at a “Patriots Unity Day” rally in Randolph. The second speaker was Jessica Vaughan, of the nativist organization Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Like FAIR, CIS was founded by John Tanton and publishes dubious statistics on immigration. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, CIS also maintains links to white supremacist and anti-semitic groups. CIS executive director Mark Krikorian quipped after the deadly 2010 Haitian earthquake: “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.” The third speaker was Raymond Hanna with the anti-Muslim hate group ACT for America, which also has white supremacist ties. In Arkansas ACT’s “March Against Shariah” events were organized by a Nazi and publicized on Stormfront.

In June this year the Sheriff appeared with Dan Stein and Michelle Malkin at an annual “Hold their feet to the fire” broadcast with anti-gay bigot Sandy Rios. Stein is executive director of FAIR, and characterizes America’s immigration laws as an effort “to retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance.” Stein describes Central American immigrants as engaged in “competitive breeding” and asks: “Should we be subsidizing people with low IQs to have as many children as possible, and not subsidizing those with high ones?” Malkin too has links to white supremacist groups, including VDARE, and to Islamophobic groups. Malkin opposes the 14th Amendment, which gave citizenship to slaves.

According to FAIR’s 2011 annual report, that was the year the organization began cultivating sheriffs like Hodgson. “In 2011, we identified sheriffs who expressed concerns about illegal immigration.” FAIR staff “met with these sheriffs and their deputies, supplied them with a steady stream of information, established regular conference calls so they could share information and experiences, and invited them to come to Washington to meet with FAIR’s senior staff.” Since roughly that time Hodgson’s main job has been as a FAIR spokesman.

It’s hard to believe that the avuncular fellow who sends Thanksgiving turkeys to deportees in the Azores could really have such horrific views. But when the sheriff keeps consorting with white supremacists, singing and quoting their lyrics in the original German – well – it’s hard to reach any other conclusion. Tom Hodgson is a white supremacist.

It was disappointing that the Chamber of Commerce gave this hater a mainstream platform, and worse, an opportunity to skip another day of work – taking care of the business Bristol County voters actually elected him to do.