State legislators claim bills aimed at barring prison employees from acting as immigration officials and inmates from working out of state — as cheap labor on President Trump’s proposed border wall — are about saving taxpayer money, but Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson denounced the moves as dangerous political posturing.
“If you didn’t learn anything after 9/11, and apparently a lot of these people didn’t, it’s that we need to strengthen our partnerships with one another in law enforcement, to make sure we have every possible tool in our toolbox to keep people safe,” Hodgson said after a Beacon Hill hearing yesterday. “This is strictly politically motivated.”
Legislators held a public hearing on two bills filed by state Rep. Antonio Cabral, D-New Bedford, in response to actions from Hodgson over the last six months. One bill would bar Massachusetts prisoners from working outside of the state, after Hodgson said earlier this year he would send his prisoners to build the proposed wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
The other would restrict funding for collaborations between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and state agencies, known as 287(g) agreements, that give state law enforcement officers ICE abilities to investigate and detain residents on immigration charges. Hodgson signed an agreement between ICE and the Bristol County Sheriff’s Department last year, and the Plymouth Sheriff’s Department and the Department of Correction have agreements as well.
Federal law requires states pay for their employees to act as ICE investigators, but Cabral’s bill would bar state dollars from those activities and insist on them being federally funded — as well as requiring any agencies with 287(g) status to report how their activities are funded to prevent state money being spent on immigration enforcement.
Cabral said the state should not spend its own money to pay for federal law enforcement work. And he said barring state funding would not effectively defund any agreement, saying the federal government could change its policy.
“I’m not cutting off that avenue, the federal government already cut that avenue,” Cabral said after the hearing. “If they don’t want to spend money on those agreements, why should the state spend money on them?”
Hodgson said 287(g) agreements prevent arrested illegal immigrants from being freed on bail. And he said that FEMA could pay for moving and housing inmates for the border wall project, while their labor would cut costs.
