BOSTON — A Boston federal judge appointed by Barack Obama on Thursday handed the Trump Department of Justice an embarrassing dismissal — and Mayor Michelle Wu a clean sanctuary win.
U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin granted the city’s motion to dismiss the DOJ’s nine-month-old lawsuit against the Boston Trust Act, ruling the federal government’s claims “fail at the threshold” because Washington “has not made a plausible showing that its alleged injuries are redressable by the judicial relief it seeks.”
Translation: even if Trump’s DOJ won, nothing would change.
“As a matter of Massachusetts law, Boston law enforcement officers may not detain a person solely based on a federal immigration detainer or administrative warrant because no authority empowers them to do so,” Sorokin wrote.
“With or without the Boston Trust Act, then, Boston police officers cannot detain a person pursuant solely to a federal civil immigration detainer.”
The DOJ, in other words, sued the wrong target.
What the Trust Act actually does
The Boston Trust Act, first enacted in 2014 and amended in 2019, blocks Boston Police and other city departments from cooperating with ICE on civil immigration detainers — the routine paperwork ICE uses to ask local jails to hold someone past their release date so federal agents can collect them.
The law carves out exceptions for the serious stuff: human trafficking, child exploitation, drug and weapons trafficking, and cybercrimes. Boston Police can — and do — cooperate with federal agents on those.
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What they cannot do is honor a routine civil detainer for an illegal migrant otherwise eligible for release.
An Obama judge keeping an Obama-era law
Sorokin was nominated to the federal district court by then-President Barack Obama in 2013 and confirmed by the Senate in 2014 — the same year Boston’s Trust Act first passed. He has sat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ever since.
His Thursday ruling dismisses every claim against Mayor Wu, Police Commissioner Michael Cox, and the Boston Police Department. None of them will be answering to the Trump DOJ in any further proceeding tied to this complaint.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘Victory for the rule of law’
Jill Habig, founder and CEO of the Public Rights Project, which represented Boston alongside the city’s own lawyers, called the ruling “a victory for the rule of law and for local governments across the country.”
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“The federal government sought to use the courts to attack a local policy it disagreed with, but the court rejected that effort,” Habig said. “This case is part of a broader pattern of federal abuse of power aimed at pressuring local governments to fall in line with political priorities set in Washington.”
A city lawyer had called the DOJ’s lawsuit “fundamentally an intimidation tactic” during the May 13 hearing.
A bad week for Trump DOJ in Massachusetts
Thursday’s dismissal makes it two ICE-adjacent setbacks for Washington in the Bay State in a single week.
On Wednesday, the DOJ hauled Massachusetts and three other states into court over confidential state-vehicle plate policies that hide ICE-related law enforcement vehicles from federal pickup. On Thursday — the same day as Sorokin’s dismissal — Governor Maura Healey rolled out new guidance ordering Massachusetts schools, hospitals, and houses of worship to refuse ICE access to nonpublic areas without a judge-signed warrant.
Two state branches, the Massachusetts attorney general, and now the federal district court have all weighed in on the sanctuary fight. Not one has sided with the Trump DOJ.
In the meantime, illegal migrants in Boston who would be vulnerable to ICE civil enforcement in other cities are not vulnerable here. The Trust Act remains the law of the city. Massachusetts state law backs it up. And the Obama-appointed federal judge who heard the case has now told the federal government to take it elsewhere.
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