Criminal Release: Judge Greenlights Boston’s Defiance

Crowd gathered on steps of Capitol building.

patriotspotlight.org — A federal judge has now sided with Boston’s sanctuary agenda, allowing the city to keep shielding illegal immigrants from federal authorities even when serious crimes are involved.

Story Snapshot

A federal judge has allowed Boston’s Trust Act sanctuary policy to remain in place, rebuffing the Trump Justice Department’s challenge.
The Boston Trust Act blocks local police from honoring most federal immigration detainer requests or helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement in civil enforcement.^[2]^[5]
The Department of Justice argues the policy is illegal under federal law and releases dangerous criminal offenders back into communities.^[4]^[3]
Supporters claim the Constitution prevents Washington from forcing cities to cooperate, framing this as a “local control” and “public safety” measure.^[4]^[6]

Judge lets Boston keep restricting cooperation with federal immigration agents

A federal district judge in Massachusetts has now allowed Boston’s so-called Trust Act, the city’s sanctuary-style ordinance, to remain in force despite a lawsuit from the Trump administration’s Department of Justice that argued the policy violates federal law and endangers public safety.^[2]^[3] The lawsuit, filed in 2025, claimed the ordinance improperly blocks cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and interferes with the executive branch’s ability to remove people who are in the country unlawfully.^[3]^[4] The judge instead accepted Boston’s arguments that the city can decide how its police resources are used, at least for now.^[1]^[6]

The Department of Justice framed the case as a straightforward Supremacy Clause conflict, asserting that Boston’s rules “interfere” with federal immigration enforcement and are “illegal under federal law.”^[4]^[3] Federal officials argued that the Trust Act leads to the release of individuals convicted of serious crimes such as aggravated assault, burglary, drug trafficking, and human trafficking, instead of allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take custody for removal.^[4]^[3] Conservative members of the House Oversight Committee have similarly warned that sanctuary policies in Boston and other cities obstruct federal efforts to remove criminal aliens from the country.

What Boston’s Trust Act actually does on the street

The Boston Trust Act, first adopted in 2014 and amended in 2019, orders Boston police not to detain immigrants for potential deportation unless there is a criminal arrest warrant issued by a judge.^[2]^[5] The ordinance prohibits police and other city employees from using city funds or personnel to interrogate, detain, or arrest people for civil immigration enforcement that is the responsibility of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.^[5] This includes refusing to hold people past their release time solely on an immigration detainer, declining to provide release-date information, and not acting on administrative immigration warrants without a judicial order.^[5]^[2]

The policy draws a sharp line between civil immigration enforcement and criminal or public safety work, a distinction that sanctuary advocates across the country have pushed for years.^[2]^[7] Boston’s rules still permit collaboration with the Homeland Security Investigations arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on criminal investigations and serious public safety threats, while specifically cutting off cooperation in purely civil immigration cases.^[2]^[5]^[7] City attorneys and allied groups describe this as a way to “focus on public safety priorities rather than carrying out federal civil immigration arrests” and to foster trust between immigrant communities and local police.^[6]^[4] Supporters contend that officers are more effective when residents are not afraid that every contact with police will lead to deportation.^[4]^[6]

City and state leaders celebrate, but constitutional questions remain

Boston’s legal team argued that federal law does not require cities to participate in civil immigration enforcement and that the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment prevents Washington from commandeering local officials to run federal programs.^[6]^[2] Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell filed a supporting brief, asserting that the Trust Act is consistent with both state and federal law and that local governments have the authority to decide how to deploy their police powers to protect community welfare.^[4] She pointed to a 2017 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that said state and local officers have no authority to detain someone based solely on a civil immigration detainer, bolstering Boston’s claim that its policy merely aligns with state law.^[1]^[4]

Sounds as dumb & self-damaging to the U.S. as Trump’s “brilliant” tariff policy.

Sanctuary Cities
•Albuquerque, NM
•Berkeley, CA
•Boston, MA
•Chicago, IL
•Denver, CO
•East Lansing, MI
•Hoboken, NJ
•Jersey City, NJ
•Los Angeles, CA
•New Orleans, LA

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— WeCanBeHeroes 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇬🇱🇨🇦🇲🇽 (@FourScore_7) May 27, 2026

During hearings on the motion to dismiss, Boston’s lawyers told Judge Leo Sorokin that Justice Department officials had offered only hypothetical harms and “not a single instance” where the Trust Act actually prevented federal agents from doing their jobs or caused a specific public safety incident.^[1]^[6] They emphasized that the ordinance does not block federal officers from making arrests themselves, but simply directs that “Boston’s policing resources go to criminal law enforcement,” not civil immigration work.^[1]^[6] For now, the judge’s decision to let the policy stand signals that cities like Boston can continue testing the outer limits of how far they can go in refusing to help enforce federal immigration law.