Mayor Michelle Wu said Boston “will not yield” as the U.S. Department of Justice sues the city over its policy to restrict police cooperation with non-criminal federal immigration enforcement.
The DOJ announced Thursday that it had filed a civil suit against Boston, Wu and Police Commissioner Michael Cox seeking to have a federal judge invalidate “Boston’s sanctuary city laws that interfere with the federal government’s enforcement of its immigration laws.”
At issue is the so-called Trust Act, which bars city police from honoring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests to keep a person in police custody for longer than required while the federal agency considers the person’s immigration status. Wu has said the city continues to work with federal law enforcement on criminal cases and the DOJ lawsuit echoes that.
“The City of Boston and its Mayor have been among the worst sanctuary offenders in America – they explicitly enforce policies designed to undermine law enforcement and protect illegal aliens from justice,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “If Boston won’t protect its citizens from illegal alien crime, this Department of Justice will.”
Wu, who has repeatedly defended the city as it has attracted the ire of the Trump administration, said the latest “unconstitutional attack on our city is not a surprise.”
“Boston is a thriving community, the economic and cultural hub of New England, and the safest major city in the country — but this administration is intent on attacking our community to advance their own authoritarian agenda,” she said in a statement. The mayor added, “This is our City, and we will vigorously defend our laws and the constitutional rights of cities, which have been repeatedly upheld in courts across the country. We will not yield.”
Massachusetts has not declared itself a “sanctuary state,” but the state and its capital city have been popular targets of the Trump administration amid pushback against policies that federal officials see as lenient towards immigrants.
Boston’s Trust Act explicitly tells local law enforcement they “shall not detain an individual solely on the basis of a civil immigration detainer request or an ICE administrative warrant after the individual is eligible for release from custody, unless ICE has a criminal warrant, issued by a Judicial Officer, for the individual.”
The Trust Act was first passed by the Boston City Council in 2014 and amended in 2019.
In its 2017 Lunn decision, the Supreme Judicial Court held that Massachusetts state law “provides no authority for Massachusetts court officers to arrest and hold an individual solely on the basis of a Federal civil immigration detainer, beyond the time that the individual would otherwise be entitled to be released from State custody.”
The DOJ’s lawsuit says Boston police “honored all civil immigration detainer requests from ICE” throughout 2015, but has since stopped doing so “as the national crisis with illegal immigration reached its peak.”
The suit claims that Boston “singles out the Federal Government for disfavored treatment” with its policy but also notes that the city does still work with the feds on criminal and homeland security matters.
“While the City of Boston enjoys federal cooperation with the Boston Police Department— including with ICE-HSI—in criminal enforcement, the Boston Trust Act expressly shuts out substantially all cooperation with ICE in civil immigration enforcement,” the suit says.
The DOJ argues that ICE is carrying out its mission to enforce the country’s immigration laws following directions and using methods provided by Congress. And by resisting what Congress has authorized, the suit says the Boston policy “requires federal immigration officers either (1) to engage in difficult and dangerous efforts to re-arrest aliens who were previously in local custody, endangering immigration officers, the particular alien, and others who may be nearby, or (2) to determine that it is not appropriate to transfer an alien to local custody in the first place, in order to comply with their mission to enforce the immigration laws.”
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Boston called the DOJ lawsuit a scare tactic and said she does not want the city to be intimidated by the Trump administration “as they continue terrorizing our communities.”
“Nothing the Trump Administration has done since taking office has been about public safety. From the militarization of our cities, to abducting our neighbors off the street, to sham, baseless lawsuits like this one—it has always been about sowing fear, punishing dissent, and tearing apart hardworking immigrant families,” Pressley said. “In Boston, we take care of our neighbors, and we do not back down.”
