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Immigration detention conditions in Bristol County, Massachusetts have faced renewed opposition since the start of the pandemic.
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ach person signed the letter with their name, ID, and bed number. Some of the metal bunks stood empty, an ambiguous remembrance of a former occupant’s release or deportation. When COVID-19 swept through Massachusetts in March, the detainees inside the Bristol County House of Correction Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) units were stuck sleeping in beds moored three feet apart. They were terrified. The fifty-one members of Unit B wrote and signed a desperate letter outlining
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their situation, followed days later by a similar plea from forty-seven detainees in Unit A. Represented by Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic and the Boston-based firm Lawyers for Civil Rights, the detainees filed a lawsuit against Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson and ICE officials on Friday, March 27, 2020. Savino v. Hodgson sought the release of immigrants detained in Bristol County to mitigate the risk of contracting COVID-19. The lawsuit alleged that Sheriff Hodgson and his staff disregarded social distancing guidelines, failed to provide sanitation supplies and personal protective equipment, and admitted new detainees without taking proper precautions to prevent the virus from spreading. Massachusetts federal district Judge William Young began issuing orders to release detainees in early April, eventually freeing around fifty people. But those who were allowed to return to their communities found that Sheriff Hodgson continued to scrutinize their move-
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