The Plymouth County sheriff’s office on Wednesday confirmed to GBH News that it has extended its federal contract to detain immigrants. The same day, advocates reupped their calls to end to the program, alleging longtime civil rights abuses.
A document shared with GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting shows that a contract initiated with the agency in September 2008 had been extended several times, most recently until Sept. 21, 2023.
“Our contract has not expired and is extended to January 2024,” said Karen Barry, director of external affairs for the county sheriff’s office. She said in a message that there are 92 immigrant detainees at this time. Barry said there’s a provision in the contract for extension.
Plymouth is the only county in Massachusetts that still has an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain immigrants. Similar agreements ended in Franklin and Bristol counties in recent years.
Advocates want to see Plymouth follow suit.
“There hasn't really been a lot of opportunity for community input about the decision to continue detaining people at Plymouth in its capacity. And we find that really concerning,” said Leah Hastings, legal fellow with the Immigrant Detention Conditions Project at Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts.
Hastings said that among the complaints from current and former Plymouth detainees are stories of discrimination, retaliation, punitive use of solitary confinement and medical neglect. She also said attorney access has been an issue.
Prisoners' Legal Services referred to a 2021 letter to Plymouth Sheriff Joseph McDonald and Boston Office Acting Field Director of ICE Todd Lyons, in which they called for the release of individuals due to conditions there. One instance of alleged physical abuse involved a non-English speaking older man being dragged out of his cell.
“Staff handcuffed him, sat him in a disciplinary restraint chair, covered his mouth, tied his arms and legs, put a covering over his face and proceeded to kick him,” the letter said.
At the end of 2021 and in 2022, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, another recipient of that letter, investigated allegations of abuse and flagged additional “serious allegations of retaliation” from 39 detainees.”
Those included “verbal mistreatment by officers and medical staff,” “housing unit searches during which officers threw detainees’ belongings on the ground and/or threw belongings away,” “uncooked food,” and officers urinating in spaces used by the detained immigrants.
Earlier this year, a group of advocacy and law organizations and Prisoners Legal Services filed a civil rights complaint with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, expressing concerns about attorney access, mail and phone access, confidentiality, improper strip searches, language access, and civil rights violations. Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office said the complaint is under review.
Marco Battistotti was detained at Plymouth’s ICE detention center in 2020, where he alleges he was retaliated against for speaking up about conditions at the facility.
He says he was trying to type up a legal document on a typewriter at the facility, but the ink was out, and he tried replacing it. A guard alleged he broke the typewriter.
“They put me in segregation under the false claim that I destroyed a typewriter, which it was absolutely false,” he said, adding that he eventually went on a hunger strike about the matter until he was transferred.
He was transferred to a New York facility in December 2020 after the hunger strike, and eventually released in 2021.
Battistotti is advocating for the Plymouth ICE facility’s closure, and thinks that while certain agencies are aware of alleged abuses, that’s not enough.
“Even if escalating that by involving DHS inspector general or the attorney general's office, they pause the malpractice for a little bit, and then they return to it. It doesn’t end,” he said.
