A Massachusetts sheriff has proposed an initiative that would send inmates down to the U.S.-Mexico border to help build the wall proposed by President-elect Donald Trump.
In a report from Fox 25 News, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson announced his Project N.I.C.E. (National Inmate's Community Endeavors) initiative last week on Wednesday. The project would have inmates from the Bristol County House of Corrections facility in Dartmouth "volunteer" their time to build the border wall or clean up disaster areas.
The announcement was made during the inauguration address for Hodgson's fourth six-year term as county sheriff.
Hodgson then followed that up with an interview with Herald Radio on Thursday, where he said his proposed initiative is currently being reviewed by Trump administration's staff. However, the sheriff has yet to hear from Trump himself.
"They have it, [and] I believe it's going over to their domestic policy advisers," Hodgson said. "We will have to wait to see if it's something the president-elect is interested in."
The American Civil Liberties Union has spoken out against Hodgson's project, with organization calling it "perverse, inhumane and likely unconstitutional."
"Not only is Sheriff Hodgson willing to get involved with Trump's racially discriminatory plan to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, he is proposing to use modern-day slave labor to do it," Carol Rose, ACLU of Massachusetts' executive director, said in a statement. "The men and women incarcerated at the Bristol County House of Corrections are mostly poor people and people of color. The idea of sending them to build a wall to keep out other people of color who are fleeing violence or devastating poverty is abhorrent."
"If Sheriff Hodgson follows through on this shameful plan, the ACLU of Massachusetts is prepared to use every tool in our toolbox, including litigation, to stop him," Rose concluded.
