DARTMOUTH — The Bristol County Sheriff’s Office says it will assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in any way possible after the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department announced Tuesday that it would stop housing federal detainees so they can instead provide more services for women inmates.

Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins says ICE has two months to move roughly 200 federal detainees from the Suffolk County House of Correction. Most of the inmates held at the Boston jail are reportedly illegal immigrants that are “high-level category offenders,” according to an ICE spokesman.

“The Bristol County Sheriff’s Office will help ICE however we can with the transition in Suffolk County and we will continue to partner with ICE and other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to protect our neighborhoods,” Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson said in a statement to WBSM News.

Multiple Boston-based media outlets report that Sheriff Tompkins says the move was not the result of an attempt at a political statement, saying it was instead an effort to improve living conditions for incarcerated women in Suffolk County.

Deputy Director of the ICE New England Field Office Todd Lyons predicts the move will have a significant impact on the agency’s daily operations.

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