Communication was received from Police Commissioner Michael A. Cox in…

The Boston Trust Act, first enacted in 2014 and strengthened over subsequent years, prohibits Boston police from detaining individuals solely on the basis of a federal civil immigration detainer request unless certain conditions are met, such as a judicial warrant or a serious criminal record. Section 3 of the Act requires the Police Commissioner to report annually to the City Council on the number of detainer requests received, how many were honored or declined, and related data. This communication is Commissioner Cox fulfilling that statutory obligation for calendar year 2025.

The constitutional backdrop involves the longstanding legal tension between federal immigration authority under Article I and the Tenth Amendment principles that limit the federal government's ability to commandeer state and local law enforcement resources. Federal courts, including in cases like Galarza v. Szalczyk, have found that civil immigration detainers are requests, not mandates, and that localities are not legally required to comply. Boston's Trust Act is built on this legal foundation.

From a fiscal and operational standpoint, sanctuary policies like the Trust Act have budgetary implications in both directions. Localities that decline detainers may face reduced federal grant eligibility under certain administrations, while they also avoid the costs of holding individuals beyond their release date without compensation from federal authorities. The actual financial impact depends heavily on the federal administration's enforcement posture in any given year.

Stakeholders affected include undocumented immigrants living in Boston, who face reduced risk of local police facilitating their deportation; Boston residents broadly, whose police department's priorities and community trust relationships are shaped by this policy; federal immigration enforcement agencies like ICE, whose ability to use local jails as a detention pipeline is curtailed; and local law enforcement, whose relationship with immigrant communities is directly influenced by whether those communities trust police will not report them to immigration authorities.

This annual report serves as a democratic accountability tool, allowing elected officials and the public to assess whether the city is actually implementing its stated sanctuary policy. Transparency reports like this one are a relatively recent innovation in local immigration governance, growing in prominence after sanctuary city debates intensified nationally following 2016.

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Under Section 3 of the Boston Trust Act, the city's Police Commissioner is required each year to report to the Boston City Council on how local police handled civil immigration detainer requests, which are asks from federal immigration authorities to hold individuals in custody beyond their normal release date for potential deportation proceedings. Commissioner Michael A. Cox submitted the 2025 report fulfilling this obligation. The Trust Act itself limits when Boston police can honor these detainer requests, generally requiring a judicial warrant or evidence of a serious criminal history before local resources are used to assist federal immigration enforcement.

Supporters of the Trust Act and this reporting process argue that the policy makes Boston safer by encouraging immigrants, regardless of status, to interact with police without fear that any contact could trigger deportation. Advocates point to court rulings confirming that civil detainers are legally optional for localities, and they view the annual report as an essential democratic check ensuring the city lives up to its stated commitments. City Council members who pushed for the reporting requirement say the data allows them to hold the police department accountable to the law as written.

Opponents of sanctuary policies like the Trust Act argue that declining detainer requests undermines a coordinated national immigration enforcement system and can result in individuals with criminal histories being released rather than transferred to federal custody. Some critics argue the policy puts Boston at odds with federal law and risks the loss of federal grants tied to law enforcement cooperation. During periods of heightened federal immigration enforcement, cities with sanctuary ordinances have faced direct legal and financial pressure from the executive branch.

For ordinary Boston residents, this communication represents a relatively rare moment of public transparency about how local policing intersects with federal immigration enforcement. The numbers in the report reveal in concrete terms how many times federal authorities asked Boston police to hold someone and how the department responded, giving residents and their elected representatives actual data rather than rhetoric on a subject that affects tens of thousands of people living and working in the city.