Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the city will “vigorously defend” a city ordinance that limits Boston Police’s cooperation with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on civil immigration enforcement after the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit challenging the ordinance Thursday evening.
“This unconstitutional attack on our city is not a surprise,” Wu said in a statement. “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.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, challenges Boston’s Trust Act, which prohibits Boston police officers from arresting, holding or transferring people to ICE when their only alleged crime is a civil immigration offense.
“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 press release about the suit. “If Boston won’t protect its citizens from illegal alien crime, this Department of Justice will.”
Counter to the Trump administration’s view, Wu and other Boston officials have argued that the Trust Act helps keep Bostonians safe by strengthening trust and cooperation with Boston Police.
“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,” Wu said Thursday.
The city ordinance, which was passed in 2014 and amended in 2019, still allows Boston Police to work with Homeland Security Department investigations regarding “issues of significant public safety, such as human trafficking, child exploitation, drug and weapons trafficking, and cybercrimes.”
On Aug. 5, Bondi published a list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” that included the city of Boston and “vowed to bring litigation to end these policies nationwide.” The federal justice department filed a similar suit against New York City in July.
“Not only are Boston’s sanctuary city policies illegal under federal law, but, as alleged in the complaint, Boston’s refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities results in the release of dangerous criminals from police custody who would otherwise be subject to removal, including illegal aliens convicted of aggravated assault, burglary, and drug and human trafficking, onto the streets,” the Justice Department release about the lawsuit reads.
A Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll from July found that, by and large, Bostonians support the Trust Act’s limitations on Boston Police’s cooperation with ICE. The Trust Act is also in line with a 2017 ruling by Massachusetts’ highest court that found that, under state law, local officials cannot detain a person based on civil immigration law violations alone.
Wu, Boston and Massachusetts have often been the targets of the new Trump administration’s rhetoric and actions surrounding immigration. During a Massachusetts-based operation in May, ICE detained nearly 1,500 people in a single month.
Late last month, the Trump administration teased a new massive immigration enforcement effort in Boston that could begin as soon as this month.
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