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Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux is restricting the information his office shares with federal immigration agencies while criticizing the federal government’s increasingly aggressive enforcement tactics.
In a news release last week following the second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by immigration agents in Minneapolis, Heroux delivered sharp criticisms of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and since-demoted Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, calling them incompetent and saying they should step down.
“What we have been seeing is amateur hour… There is clearly a problem within DHS leadership,” Heroux wrote. “And there is certainly no accountability. This is willful indifference to the rule of law and human life… This is why the shootings will continue.”
Heroux’s declaration and his recent social media posts on federal immigration enforcement, viewed and shared hundreds of thousands of times, are part of a broader shift in how the local Sheriff’s Office, like other law enforcement agencies across the country, is responding to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following violent and fatal incidents.
In November, Heroux enacted a new policy that limits who in his office shares information with federal immigration agencies — and how. As The Light reported in October, Sheriff’s Office staff routinely provided information on court hearings, bookings and upcoming bail or release times to inquiring ICE officers — actions that enabled, and in some cases facilitated, immigration arrests and detentions on the South Coast.
Now, if federal immigration officers want that information, they need to file a public records request. Heroux said inquiries from ICE have largely fallen off since.
ICE spokesperson James Covington did not provide comment on The Light’s questions about how or whether the new policy has affected the agency’s operations in Bristol County.
“A liability”
Among the 14 Massachusetts sheriffs, Heroux seemingly stands alone in his open criticisms of recent federal immigration operations.
“I feel like community members look up to public officials for direction,” he said.
Heroux says he’s amended his approach to dealing with federal immigration agencies because DHS exposes his office to liability and has “proven not to be a good law enforcement partner.” He cited the 2020 riot at the now-closed Dartmouth immigrant detention center, then under the leadership of his predecessor, Thomas Hodgson, as one example.
“I’m not saying they shouldn’t do immigration enforcement,” Heroux said in a recent interview with The Light. “But the way they are doing it is endangering citizens, migrants, and other law enforcement. The way you do something matters.”
Shortly after the fatal Jan. 7 shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minnesota mother of three, by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, Heroux posted about it on Facebook.
“Have we lost our way?” Heroux asked. “Government is at its finest when it admits it made a mistake. It is at its worst when it thinks it doesn’t make mistakes.”
In a second post published a few days later, Heroux said members of the public should not interfere with ICE agents, including by blocking them from doing their jobs or physically engaging with them. But, he said people should exercise their First Amendment rights by recording what they observe and sharing it on social media.
He began rethinking his approach to cooperating with ICE, he says, after his office settled a $10 million lawsuit in August stemming from a 2020 confrontation at the then C. Carlos Carreiro Immigrant Detention Center in Dartmouth. Hodgson was sheriff at the time.
“We had to pay out $800,000,” Heroux said. “It went to plaintiffs who were ICE detainees and sued the jail. My thinking was this: working with ICE exposes us to legal liability. It exposes us because when things went sideways… ICE wasn’t there to help. ICE left us on our own.”
And following recent episodes — from the violent behavior of ICE agents in Minnesota to deaths of immigrants in ICE custody — backing ICE agents could backfire on local law enforcement, Heroux surmises.
“The concern is that if we gave ICE information that we didn’t legally have to give them, and then that person dies in their custody, the lawyers I work with have determined that would place us in legal liability,” Heroux said.
How sheriff’s communications with ICE changed
On Nov. 25, Heroux introduced the new policy. He says he called ICE officer Nathan Campbell, with whom the office has regularly interacted, and informed him of the policy verbally.
“In the absence of an active criminal detainer or criminal arrest warrant signed by a federal judicial officer,” the policy reads, “any request for information submitted by officials from [ICE] to the BCSO shall be treated as a public records request and forwarded to the BCSO’s Records Access Officer (RAO). The RAO shall review the request pursuant to the Public Records Law. No such information shall be provided to ICE officials without the review and signed approval of this Public Records Request by the RAO.”
ICE files detainer forms with local agencies, asking them to notify ICE “as early as practicable (at least 48 hours, if possible)” before it releases an inmate from custody.
But now, Heroux tells The Light that his policy also applies to requests for notification when an inmate is released from jail: ICE officials are now required to file a public records request if they want that information.
The sheriff’s records officer, Michael Arnold, said that as of late January, he has not received any public records requests from ICE.
The Sheriff’s Office has responded to public records requests in as little as one day, in The Light’s experience. (State law allows government agencies up to 10 business days to respond.)
Heroux said he wanted to centralize communications in order to avoid internal confusion over who is authorized to communicate with ICE.
As of mid-January, ICE agents have contacted the Sheriff’s Office at least two times by email since the policy took effect, according to email records provided by the office. (Eight emails of unknown dates were withheld.)
Twice in December, ICE Deportation Officer Rocco Basso wrote to the office asking for verification that a detainee is in custody, as well as the time and location of court and bail dates, emails show. Information like the date and location of a court hearing has always been public and obtainable through the state’s court system.
According to the records provided by the Sheriff’s Office to The Light, an employee of the Sheriff’s Office forwarded one of Basso’s emails to the public records office.
Arnold responded to the Sheriff’s Office employee: “BCSO can verify that the individual listed is in custody. Please contact the MA courts for further court information.”
It’s a decline from the dozens of email exchanges between ICE officers and Sheriff’s Office staff last summer and fall, according to emails reviewed by The Light. It also marks a shift, as the Sheriff’s Office has previously provided the dates and times of upcoming court hearings to ICE officers.
Bristol County Sheriff’s Office records also show that between January and November 2025, 29 inmates were taken into ICE custody — about half directly from Ash Street Jail or the Dartmouth House of Corrections, and the other half at a district courthouse. From late November, when the new policy began, through late January, zero were released into ICE custody, the records show.
What is a “sanctuary”?
President Donald Trump has signaled he will ramp up pressure on cities and states to cooperate with his immigration crackdown. On Jan. 13, at the Detroit Economic Club, he announced that federal funding to “sanctuary” cities and states will be suspended.
The Department of Justice identifies sanctuary jurisdictions based on characteristics that include limits on information sharing — meaning cities, states or counties that restrict whether and how local agencies share a detainee’s immigration status with federal authorities. The DOJ also includes jurisdictions that refuse to answer ICE detainer requests unless a judge has signed a warrant.
But under Massachusetts law, sheriffs are limited in how much they can help ICE. County jails cannot hold an inmate after bail has been posted or they are set for release.
Heroux has noted that his office will provide information in accordance with his information-sharing policy. Further, if federal agencies have criminal detainers (not the more common civil detainer) filed on an inmate, they needn’t file a formal records request for information.
Tom Homan, the White House border czar, who has been dispatched to Minneapolis following Bovino’s departure, has criticized county jails that do not share information with ICE, saying they imperil officer, immigrant and community safety.
“If they let us in their damn jail and stopped being a sanctuary city, we could arrest the bad guy in the safety and security of the jail,” said Homan about Minneapolis last month. “But because they … release them, now we gotta go in the community to find them.”
Last month, new white SUVs were delivered to the ICE facility in Burlington, raising fears about a possible upcoming ICE operation in the area and an escalation to aggressive enforcement like that seen in other states.
“What they are doing is wrong: it’s the way due process is not being honored, the way that U.S. citizens are being grabbed and detained because they have an accent or by the color of their skin,” said Heroux. “I worry it could happen here.”
Email Eleonora Bianchi at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org. Email Anastasia Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org.
