Updated September 5, 2025 at 1:40 PM EDT
The Trump administration filed a lawsuit against Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu and the Boston Police Department, saying the city’s policy to cooperate with immigration enforcement officials only in criminal matters violates federal law.
The suit, filed Thursday in federal court in Boston, takes aim at the city’s Trust Act, the 2014 legislation that said Boston Police will not honor Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests to detain individuals unless they face criminal charges.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi called out Wu specifically in her press release announcing the lawsuit.
“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,” Bondi said in the statement. “If Boston won’t protect its citizens from illegal alien crime, this Department of Justice will.”
The mayor hit back at the Trump administration in a statement Thursday night, saying, “This unconstitutional attack on our city is not a surprise.”
Wu defended Boston as “a thriving community, the economic and cultural hub of New England, and the safest major city in the country,” and said, “this administration is intent on attacking our community to advance their own authoritarian agenda.”
Wu said Boston 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.”
More on immigration enforcement in New England
Do ICE agents need a warrant to make arrests?
The debate over federal agents wearing masks
Questions over Burlington ICE office
The simmering threat of a DOJ lawsuit became more real last month, when Bondi send demand letters to Boston and 31 other cities and states, ordering them to expand cooperation with immigration enforcement as the administration pursues mass deportations or risk losing federal funding.
The DOJ suit alleges that Boston’s Trust Act puts federal law enforcement agents in danger “by mandating restrictions on basic information sharing” and barring the Department of Homeland Security access to people released from Boston police custody. The suit echoes a complaint of ICE officials in Massachusetts and Washington that they must engage in “difficult and dangerous efforts” to arrest immigrants in neighborhoods and courthouses because local officials won’t turn people over who’ve been released on other charges.
Boston isn’t the first major city Bondi has sued over immigration policy. Both New York and Los Angeles have been called to court over their own regulations.
The Trust Act was revised in 2019 and reaffirmed in 2024. Nowhere in the act is the word “sanctuary” used; the Trump administration has adopted the term as a catch-all phrase for cities that don’t actively assist ICE in civil immigration arrests.
While the DOJ suit claims Boston’s policy impedes federal immigration enforcement, Todd Lyons, the acting ICE director and former Boston ICE chief, recently boasted that he routinely gets tips from local police.
“I have so many friends — Boston police officers, Massachusetts state troopers — who are ecstatic about what we’re doing, who give us intel,” Lyons said on the Howie Carr show last month.
Wu rejected that claim this week, telling WBUR there was no evidence Boston cops are sharing information with ICE or any other agency beyond what is permitted in the Trust Act. She also vehemently denied repeated claims by the administration that the city is harboring criminals.
“Any assertion that we’re protecting or shielding criminal behavior is absolutely false,” Wu said.
The governor offered no immediate comment on the lawsuit. State Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell in a statement said, “This baseless lawsuit is yet another desperate attempt to rope local governments into helping the Trump Administration conduct their cruel immigration crackdowns, including targeting those with no criminal record.” She said she would “continue to support the City of Boston in defending against these attacks on our residents.”
Josh Kraft, who’s running for mayor against Wu, in a statement called it “yet another attempt by the Trump administration to undermine the laws and values of the City of Boston and what our nation was founded on.”
He noted that courts have so far “shut down the use of the National Guard in American cities and Boston must stand in defense of our laws and communities while continuing to work with law enforcement to keep all of our residents safe.”
At a Boston City Council hearing in the South End on Thursday night, Councilor Julia Mejia told WBUR the Trump administration “should be focusing on the economy and they should be focusing on taking care of other business — and stay out of Boston.”
And U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren condemned the lawsuit and what she described as Trump’s latest power grab.
“Boston doesn’t back down to bullies. Boston is one of the safest major cities in America thanks to Mayor Wu’s leadership and the trust between residents and public safety officials,” she said in a statement.
The city’s policy has been a routine target of Trump administration ire since the start of the president’s second term in January, with officials asserting without evidence that the regulation shields criminals from the law. In February, Trump’s border czar threatened to bring “hell” to Boston. And in March, Wu was summoned to Washington to answer question on the city’s cooperation with immigration enforcement officials before a Republican-controlled House committee. She, alongside other big-city mayors, answered hours of grilling from the panel.
“Our local community knows best,” she said of the Trust Act during the hearing. “And we can tell you in Boston, over our history, it has not been the word of presidents, or kings, or presidents who think they are kings that set what happens. It is our residents.”
WBUR’s Eve Zuckoff contributed to this report.
Correction: This story was updated to reflect that the lawsuit was filed Thursday.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2025 WBUR
