Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson officially signed up his team for a federal program that allows it — and other local law enforcement officials — to conduct immigration investigations on January 18.

Hodgson said he hopes to tackle illegal immigration in Southeastern Massachusetts with with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 287(g) program, and will send between 8 and 12 officers to receive training from ICE. He expects the program to be complete by May.

Once trained, officers will conduct interviews and investigations of the immigration status of those in the county’s prison system, he said. The officers would then contact the Boston ICE office to see how the agency wants to proceed.

“This really lets us target the criminal illegal aliens,” Hodgson said.

Making another stab at combatting illegal immigration, Hodgson offered inmates to build President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed wall across the country’s southern border during his January 4 inauguration ceremony.

The plan would fall under the Project N.I.C.E. program, through which inmates in Bristol County – and any sheriff’s departments that join the program – are sent to work on public works, infrastructure, and disaster recovery projects wherever they are needed.

Hodgson has heard nothing from the Trump team, but is optimistic about the program’s future despite opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU promised to fight the sheriff’s border wall proposal with possible litigation. Hodgson said he’s faced pressure from the organization previously, when he brought “chain gangs” to his prisons in the late 1990s.

Hodgson required that inmates doing supervised work outside of the jail, whether painting or cleaning streets — activities not unlike those proposed for Project N.I.C.E. — be shackled together while working.

For many, the measure harkened back to the days of slavery in the south. Hodgson, however, balked at that idea, arguing that it would foster a sense of teamwork among inmates and help them gain life skills. The practice is still in use today.

“I’ve been to this rodeo before. I never worry much about it,” Hodgson said. The sheriff said he plans to go forward with Trumps wall if asked for help.

Hodgson’s other big inauguration day promise to re-introduce a mandatory $5 per day inmate fee is also ongoing. Hodgson previously instituted the policy, collecting about $750,000 from inmates between 2002 and 2004, but the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2010 that he needed legislative approval for the program. Hodgson said a bill was introduced to the state legislature this year.