If Trump carries out mass deportations, local chiefs of police and county sheriffs say they won’t round people up or hold them for immigration enforcement.
This story was originally published in The New Bedford Light, a publication partner of Ocean State Stories.
NEW BEDFORD — President-elect Donald Trump likely doesn’t realize it, but when he talks about mass deportations, he conjures frightening images for members of New Bedford’s immigrant community. Some were there, or know people who were, or have heard stories about the bitter cold March 6, 2007, when federal agents descended on a factory in the South End.
Helena DaSilva Hughes, who was executive director of the Immigrants’ Assistance Center then and is president now, said she remembers watching it all from a window of a New Bedford Police command trailer, where she sought shelter from single-digit temperatures.
Dozens of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents moved in and out of the four-story brick Michael Bianco Inc. factory on West Rodney French Boulevard, bringing out one person after another to be escorted onto white buses and driven off. They must have filled five or six buses with people who were making backpacks and belts for the U.S. military at minimum wage or less, DaSilva Hughes recalled.
ICE rounded up 361 workers for being in the country illegally. The move created turmoil in dozens of families and left emotional imprints that last to this day, including lingering suspicions about police.
New Bedford officers were only handling traffic control that day, not going into the factory or making arrests, but that point may not reassure immigrant community members, Hughes said.
“All they know is they saw New Bedford police,” DaSilva Hughes said. “They looked at the State Police escorting” people into the buses. “They saw them all working together.”
In Massachusetts, public officials began to draw lines between federal, state and local roles in immigration enforcement very soon after Trump was elected on Nov. 5 for a second term. For months he has talked about deporting millions, starting with people who have criminal records.
Two days after the election, Gov. Maura Healey told an interviewer that the State Police would “absolutely not” take part in deportations.
In the weeks since then, local chiefs of police and county sheriffs have said they would not round up people or hold them for immigration enforcement, if only because state law gives them no authority to do so.
Early this month, the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association released a two-page “legal advisory” making clear that under state law established in a 2017 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the role local authorities can play in detaining people for immigration enforcement is simple: none.
The statement summarized the court opinion and key terms, making clear that local authorities — including police and sheriff’s officials — do not have the power to arrest people for federal immigration enforcement.
The advisory noted that under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the federal government cannot compel states to enforce “federal regulatory programs, including immigration enforcement.”
However, state law does not ban all cooperation with immigration enforcement. Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux and New Bedford Police Chief Paul Oliveira both say they are willing to provide information to ICE if requested. And Oliveira says he won’t prevent police officers from volunteering information to ICE.
Exceptions: ICE agreements
The exception not mentioned in the police chiefs’ advisory would be those agencies holding formal agreements to work with ICE.
At the moment, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, two agencies in the state have such agreements: the state Department of Correction, and the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office.
The Department of Correction has a so-called “287g” agreement that allows its officials to work under ICE supervision on immigration enforcement, including making arrests. The Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office has a service agreement to house immigration detainees at the jail and correctional center in Plymouth.
Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald Jr. said his agency this fall renewed the agreement through September 2029. He said he did not consider dropping it.
“It’s something I believe enhances public safety,” he said. “It’s a duty I have to the community.”
A sheriff’s public information officer said that the Plymouth County Correctional Facility’s inmate population changes daily, but in early January there were 407 ICE detainees out of 897 people there. Along with people in civil detention for immigration proceedings, the facility — which can accommodate up to 1,140 men — also houses men serving sentences and in pre-trial detention on state criminal charges, and men detained for the U.S. Marshals Service.
The Bristol County Sheriff’s Office had both types of agreements with ICE until 2021, when the Biden administration severed the arrangements. That move came after an uprising at the ICE detention center in North Dartmouth in May 2020.
A report by the state attorney general found that officers under then-Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson — an outspoken Trump supporter who considered immigration enforcement a key part of his work — used excessive force and violated the civil rights of detainees. Hodgson backed his officers and dismissed the report as politically motivated.
In his successful 2022 campaign against Hodgson, Sheriff Paul Heroux said he would not pursue immigration enforcement activity. He’s standing by that position.
A current class of recruits, due to graduate this month, in a classroom at the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office Training Academy. Credit: Arthur Hirsch / The New Bedford Light
The former immigration detention center, at the Bristol County Jail and House of Correction complex in North Dartmouth, has been renovated and recently opened as a training academy and offices. In a media gathering for the opening in November, Heroux told reporters that if ICE asks for information on people in custody, he would provide it, but that’s all.
“The federal government has an important job to do,” Heroux told reporters at the training center, but “we’re not going to do their job for them.”
Barnstable County Sheriff Donna Buckley, also elected in 2022, took a similar position during her campaign against Republican state Rep. Timothy R. Whelan. In her first official act in office, the Democrat severed the 287g contract her agency had with ICE.
Immigration enforcement is “not the work of the sheriff’s office,” Buckley said in a recent interview. “It was more of a political statement than an effort at public safety… It caused people unnecessarily to live in fear.”
ACLU: Trump calling for “blatantly illegal” actions
While it’s clear that most local authorities in Massachusetts have no role in arresting or holding immigration detainees, other questions about how state and local agencies will respond to immigration enforcement are more murky, or may have to be settled in court.
Daniel McFadden, a managing attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said it’s too early to say how the new Trump administration will try to use local resources in immigration enforcement. Part of the complication, McFadden said, is that many actions Trump suggested during the campaign would be “blatantly illegal.”
He mentioned Trump’s call for invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law giving the president authority to detain non-citizens, and his support for revoking birthright citizenship.
McFadden said the Alien Enemies Act applies only when the country is in a declared war or under invasion. Birthright citizenship is established by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
McFadden also said Trump would be breaking the law if he were to follow through on his stated support for using the military to enforce immigration law.
This point is more complicated. While the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bars the federal government from using the military to enforce federal policies, there are exceptions.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, federal law allows federal troops, including federalized National Guard, to “assist” in law enforcement, including providing equipment, but not performing basic law enforcement. Federal law also allows the president to ask, but not require, that governors deploy their states’ National Guard to perform certain federal missions free from restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act.
If governors do not comply, it’s possible that the president could still activate state National Guard troops. Some legal scholars argue that he could use the Insurrection Act to do this.
Healey has unequivocally opposed using the State Police for immigration enforcement, but has not taken a public stand on using the state National Guard for this purpose. Her press office did not respond to requests for comment.
Caught between cooperation, community
New Bedford Police Chief Paul Oliveira said some aspects of working with ICE are a matter of cooperation with another law enforcement agency. That includes providing information if ICE asks for it.
“If they reached out as a federal partner,” asking “’what’s this guy’s last known address’ … I’m not going to take a stance that we won’t cooperate with a federal law enforcement agency,” Oliveira said. He said he would not object to his officers volunteering information if they thought ICE would need it.
“I’m not going to put a directive out and say ‘don’t reach out to ICE,’” Oliveira said.
Mayor Jon Mitchell and Police Chief Paul Oliveira met with members New Bedford’s migrant community during a Christmas party in 2024 at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, where they addressed the concerns of those living in the city without documentation. Credit: Gerardo Beltrán Salinas / The New Bedford Light
At the same time, Oliveira said he wants to sustain what he and DaSilva Hughes both say is a good relationship between city police and the city’s immigrant community.
DaSilva Hughes, who has been with the IAC since 1984, said the organization has worked with a number of police chiefs, but Oliveira has made the most robust effort to connect with the Spanish-speaking community.
She said Oliveira has attended church with IAC advocates, hired bilingual officers, and attended community meetings. He testified in favor of a state law adopted last year allowing residents to apply for a driver’s license regardless of their immigration status.
In early December, both Oliveira and Heroux visited the IAC in the South End to deliver presentations on their role in federal immigration enforcement.
DaSilva Hughes said 10 to 20 people attended. She said she expects both officials to be back to discuss immigration enforcement.
“It’s important that the community is being protected,” DaSilva Hughes said. “Our fear is that all this work we’ve done with the police is going to go away” if Trump conducts the deportation program he has described.
Oliveira is mostly reserving comment now, as the campaign rhetoric has not yet met the complicated legal and political realities of implementing mass deportations. McFadden, of the ACLU, said the civil proceedings of a deportation can take months to more than a year.
The cost of the expansive program Trump has described has been estimated at tens or even hundreds of billions a year.
Heightened anxiety reflecting the rhetoric
DaSilva Hughes said much of the anxiety in the immigrant community seems related to Trump’s harsh rhetoric on immigration. The hardline remarks have been a signature of his political brand since he emerged as a presidential candidate in 2015.
Trump has denigrated migrants as criminals, called the surge at the southern border an “invasion,” and blamed illegal immigration for taking jobs from American citizens and contributing to a housing shortage that has raised rents and home prices.
While Trump’s rhetoric has established his tough-guy persona, his record of immigration action, as measured by people removed from the country, falls short of, or is about on par with, the more soft-spoken approach taken by his predecessor, Barack Obama, and successor, President Joe Biden.
According to PolitiFact, a fact-checking operation, the Trump administration from fiscal years 2017 to 2020 — including four months of the Obama administration — recorded 2 million people sent out of the country. That includes cases handled under three different procedures: removals (usually considered synonymous with deportation), returns, and expulsions (under a pandemic-related public safety measure from 2020 to 2023).
From 2009 to 2012 — including four months of the Bush administration — the Obama administration deported 3.2 million people. During Obama’s second term, there were 2.1 million deportations.
According to a Migration Policy Institute report in July, the Biden administration’s deportations record — not including returns or pandemic-related expulsion — was on pace to match Trump’s.
But, it was all done without the Trump bluster, which sent shivers through many longtime members of New Bedford’s immigrant community and evoked memories of the Bianco raid.
DaSilva Hughes said advocates were caught off guard in 2007, but that experience has helped to provide a playbook for response, including a 19-page guide for families to prepare for emergencies.
Asked what keeps her up at night, she answered with a word: “Raids. I’ve witnessed it. That’s what keeps me up at night. Are we going to be able to protect them?”
Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org
