Sheriff Thomas Hodgson has entered the world of podcasting.

Last month, the sheriff's multimedia office launched the “Tom Hodgson Show” — a weekly podcast recorded at the Faunce Corner Road facility exploring national and local issues, along with potential insights on the county's jails. The podcast is available on Spotify, iTunes, and Amazon Music.

“It’s a great experience,” Hodgson said, adding that he doesn’t script his thoughts. “It’s all free flow.” 

Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jonathan Darling noted that the sheriff has had previous broadcast experience — with appearances on Fox News and filling in on local talk radio shows.

The first two episodes focus on a top national issue for the sheriff: undocumented immigration.

“We’re all border states — just not geographically border states,” Hodgson said. “This is a problem that affects Main Street America.”

Hodgson has come under fire from the Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s office for his treatment of federal immigration detainees at the Faunce Corner Jail’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

In December, Healey found that the Sheriff’s Office violated detainees’ civil rights in using excessive force in an altercation at the facility on May 1, 2020.

According to the report, officers responded with “excessive and disproportionate” force, including the use of “so much pepper spray...that two detainees were taken to the hospital with symptoms of respiratory distress.”

As a result, the AG recommended that the jail adopt new procedures to avoid conflicts. 

The sheriff said at a press conference that the attorney general’s report was “baseless” and “politically motivated” and that he will take any of Healey’s recommendations about as seriously as trash “halfway down the sewer pipe.”

In the first podcast episode, the sheriff alleged that Massachusetts “had the highest influx” of undocumented immigrants for any US state between 2007 and 2017 — although a 2019 analysis by the Pew Research Center puts the commonwealth in second place, behind Maryland.

“That ten year period, there were 650,000 people that came into Massachusetts,” the sheriff said.

In fact, the analysis shows the state's undocumented immigrant population increased by 35,000 during that period — reaching a total of 250,000 in 2016.

Darling noted that the sheriff misspoke on the statistic and that the numbers came from a Boston Herald article claiming that Massachusetts led the nation with an influx of 60,000 people.

“He’s sorry for any confusion,” Darling said.

A 2018 Pew report noted that there were 10.7 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in 2016 — the lowest total since 2004.

Hodgson also used the podcast to blast government officials for their “lax policies” on the issue such as releasing immigration detainees.

According to state data, there are currently seven detainees inside the Dartmouth jail’s ICE facility.

Last year, a federal judge ordered the preliminary release of dozens of detainees while barring ICE from admitting new people to detention without court approval.

This came after a class action lawsuit was filed in March 2020, claiming that detainees in the facility were not adequately protected from Covid. The case was settled early last month.

Political issues are not the only topics the sheriff plans to cover in his newest broadcast venture. The latest episode focuses on the new Vietnam War memorial in Fall River and, in an upcoming show, Hodgson plans to give tips for grilling season.

“It’s getting to be that time of year,” he said. “There’s a lot of things people don’t think about, like the positioning of the grill in relation to the wind.”

“I love to grill, so I felt like I could offer my perspectives on it,” Hodgson added.