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A court settlement between the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office and 16 former inmates has put an end to a years-long court case, but neither the former sheriff nor an attorney who advocated for some of the inmates sees it as a success.
The settlement, in which the Sheriff’s Office agreed to pay $800,000 to the plaintiffs in a $10 million lawsuit, has garnered the ire of the former sheriff and has prompted a lawyer for the inmates to call it unjust.
The lawsuit stemmed from a May 1, 2020, conflict at the then-C. Carlos Carreiro Immigrant Detention Center that sent two inmates to the hospital.
A damning report on the incident from the Massachusetts’ Attorney General’s Office said sheriffs’ employees used excessive force in suppressing detainee dissent. The incident also led to the end of a housing contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“The only responsible thing to do was settle,” Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux told The Light in an interview after the settlement, “because us and our employees were not going to be indemnified if we lost.”
Records from U.S. District Court Massachusetts show the parties agreed to the settlement on Aug. 19. The settlement is not considered an admission of wrongdoing by any of the 17 respondents in the suit, including the sheriff’s office and former Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson in a personal capacity. The suit was dismissed on Oct. 8. Heroux announced the settlement last month.
Hodgson, who was sheriff at the time of the incident and lost the 2022 election to Heroux, called the settlement a bad move.
“With all due respect to the current sheriff, it was and is a bad decision,” Hodgson said. “It should’ve never been settled. We would’ve won. The idea that somehow we had the potential to lose it was a bad miscalculation on the part of the current sheriff.”
Ira Alkalay, a retired criminal defense attorney who represented some of the inmates involved in the incident, criticized the settlement. (Alkalay handled their criminal defense and provided evidence for the lawsuit; other attorneys filed the suit.)
Since the incident, health issues have impaired Alkalay’s ability to communicate. His wife, Mindy Scharlin, joined him during his interview with The Light.
Scharlin said that she and Alkalay, who both supported Heroux in the 2022 election, feel the settlement is unjust.
“It’s not a good settlement,” Scharlin said. “On the inmates’ side, these guys were so poorly treated, and they’re only getting $60,000 [apiece].”
She and Alkalay remain supportive of Heroux otherwise.
“[He] is a progressive sheriff who’s done really good work,” she said.
According to the settlement, the first payment of $550,000 was due within 30 days of the agreement, and a second payment of $250,000 is due by June 27, 2027. The plaintiffs, five of whom were already deported at the time of the suit’s filing in April 2022, originally sought $10 million in damages.
Heroux said in a news release that the settlement would be paid using money earned from civil process fees.
Heroux added that the lawsuit was a matter he needed to address and the settlement was the best option. He also said that the contract with ICE did not require them to cover the legal expenses of the Sheriff’s Office or protect its employees from financial liability for their actions. The state also refused due to the attorney general’s findings.
“Without being indemnified, employees here who own a home could have been at risk,” Heroux told The Light. “Employees who were retired — Hodgson, for example — their pensions were in danger as well.”
The Light contacted multiple plaintiffs and their lawyers. Most declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
Inciting incident
In the 2022 lawsuit, the plaintiffs claimed that the May 2020 conflict in the detention occurred after they voiced concerns around COVID precautions and fears about the virus’ ability to spread in close quarters. According to the report on the incident by then-Attorney General Maura Healey, one detainee transported to the hospital afterward tested positive for COVID-19.
On May 1, 2020, according to the complaint, 10 inmates in Unit B were told they would be taken out for testing. Many feared that would lead to solitary confinement due to their outspokenness about virus precautions. The inmates refused, and later in the afternoon, when inmate Marco Battistotti was on the phone with lawyer Alkalay, Hodgson confronted Battistotti, the complaint alleged.
Hodgson insists that a violent confrontation resulted and he was hit by a chair. The AG’s report found no evidence supporting or refuting that claim.
The sheriff and officers retreated for about an hour, and some of the detainees caused damage to the detention center, though it remains unclear who and how many were involved. Officers returned to the unit and fired pepper spray and rubber bullets. According to some testimony, pepper spray was pumped into the unit through the ventilation system.
Alkalay was on the phone with one of the detainees at the time, though he does not recall who. Scharlin replayed the recording for The Light, and narrated what was happening in real time as the sounds of rubber bullets bouncing off objects could be heard in the background.
“They want to take us to the hole,” the inmate said in Spanish before coughing. “They’re using gas on us and many people are dying.” (No inmates died, though two were hospitalized.)
“Ira recorded the whole conversation,” Scharlin recalled. If not for his recording, she added, the lawsuit may never have happened.
In December 2020, Healey’s report found that the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office had used excessive force.
“The evidence shows that the BCSO’s use of force on May 1 was excessive and disproportionate based on the totality of the circumstances,” the report reads. “Informing our conclusion that the BCSO’s use of force was excessive, we identified myriad violations of the BCSO’s policies and procedures, as well as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) National Detention Standards.”
The report also found that the Sheriff’s Office acted with deliberate indifference toward the health and well-being of the detainees. Two detainees were taken to a hospital afterward for treatment and a third required emergency chest compressions. The report says the inmates’ non-violent refusal to comply with the testing started the incident.
“By focusing this report primarily on the BCSO’s role in the May 1 Incident, we neither intend to suggest that the detainees’ conduct in this regard was appropriate, nor do we intend to minimize the impact of this conduct on the BCSO security staff,” it says. “On the contrary, the BCSO was entitled to take reasonable and proportional steps necessary to restore institutional order at the time that the detainees were engaging in that conduct.
“But because the detainees’ conduct largely stopped in the intervening hour before the tactical and canine teams entered the unit, it simply did not justify the level of force that was ultimately applied, nor does it excuse the ultimate disregard for the health of the detainees.”
That report swiftly led to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s cancellation of its contract to house detainees at the Bristol County facility.
Hodgson insists the report came to incorrect conclusions.
“Maura Healey’s report was nothing more than a political hack job,” Hodgson told The Light.
Hodgson-Heroux rivalry
In the November 2022 election, Heroux, a Democrat and former mayor of Attleboro, defeated Hodgson, a Republican, who made a national name for himself nationally with a hardline immigration stance. During President Donald Trump’s first term, Hodgson had made headlines after he volunteered to send immigrant detainees to the southern border to build a wall.
Heroux positioned himself as a progressive in the 2022 election. The May 2020 incident was a point of conversation in that race.
“The state attorney general found that [Hodgson] has violated inmates’ rights,” Heroux told The Light in a Chat in 2022. “The loss of the ICE contract … it wasn’t political; [Hodgson] mismanaged it!” (Hodgson declined to participate in the 2022 Chat.)
About 100 days after becoming sheriff, Heroux, in another Chat with The Light, again criticized Hodgson’s handling of the situation.
“What happened in May of 2020 was not a riot,” Heroux said at the time. “I’ve seen the videos. The inmates were just standing around.”
Heroux elaborated on that point in his most recent interview with The Light.
“It wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was destructive; there were things that were broken,” Heroux said. But, he added, “To my knowledge, nobody was hurt by the ICE detainees.”
“If you go to a dictionary and look up the word ‘riot,’ usually the word violence is associated with riot,” Heroux continued. Heroux acknowledged that an inmate may have thrown a chair at Hodgson, as Hodgson alleges.
Hodgson says Heroux’s settlement did not protect the taxpayer.
“The people of this county should not be paying their taxpayer money for a group of detainees who, completely unprovoked, trashed an entire unit,” Hodgson said. “You’re going to reward them?”
Heroux insists that settling was the right call.
“If we had gone to court and lost, people would have wanted my head on a pitchfork,” Heroux said. “I know Tom disagrees with me settling. But it would have been catastrophic to people, and this is the part I don’t think Tom Hodgson appreciates.”
Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org.
From a tiny 2000 dispute, a one afternoon picket, by five of his staff during contract negotiations, through the Supreme Court’s denial in 2008, former Sheriff Hodgson spent close to $1 million — roughly $1.9 million in 2025 dollars — of taxpayer funds fighting to protect his ego. In the end, the taxpayers of the county still had to pay nearly $200,000 to the suspended staff. So the Hodgson ego taxpayer bill is close to $3m now.
“Hodgson says Heroux’s settlement did not protect the taxpayer”, while his slush funds, misuse of the Bristol County Sherrif’s Office budget, and his reporting on his parish church to Stephen Miller because it followed Christ, not Trump, were just what the taxpayers needed? Never got a ride in the boat we bought him either. Hogson had more faces than a Hydra has heads.
Are any of the inmates who won, being deported with a 60,000.00 check? Only due to the behavior of the the sheriff’s office in 2020. Otherwise, when released they’d just be deported. Don’t blame it on the outcome. Blame it on the situation when it happened in 2020, not on the current sheriff.
Settling the law suit was the right decision
After the May1, 2020 melee at the Bristol County Immigrant Detention Center, during then- Sheriff Hodgson’s last tenure in office, sixteen detained undocumented immigrants, who alleged to have been injured and denied their constitutional rights, brought suit against Sheriff Hodgson and some members of his staff.
As a result of the violent episode the former Attorney General Maura Healey conducted an extensive investigation and released her findings and recommendations in a well documented report that was made available to the public in December 2020. The report graphically described the the inflicted injuries and most significantly described the alleged disproportionate and illegal response of Sheriff Hodgson and several members of his staff during the course of this episode.
It can be suggested that this well publicized incident, in tandem with other reported failures, and a high suicide rate, convinced the Bristol County voters to elect a new sheriff.
Anyone doubtful of the actions, or inactions, of that May 1st
event, or critical of the settlement with the plaintiff immigrants, should read the Attorney General’s report in its entirety. The numerous accounts of the detained immigrants, members of the nursing staff, the correctional officers involved, the taped evidence and references to the mandated regulations, all attested to the liability that undoubtedly convinced Sheriff Heroux and his legal staff to settle this matter and avoid a potentially greater court ordered amount for the plaintiffs and their attorneys.
ICE
Makes New Bedford safer.
How Much has ICE cost Bristol County?
Doesn’t matter! Better than the funds going to support illegals. ICE should have a large budget. But do there jobs humanely!