A federal judge ruled Thursday that Boston’s sanctuary policy forbidding city authorities from letting ICE know when deportation targets are about to be released from local custody does not interfere with federal law.
Judge Leo Sorokin, an Obama appointee to the court in Massachusetts, said federal law orders states not to block sharing of information about citizenship.
But it says nothing about matters such as release times, and Boston’s Trust Act doesn’t run counter to Section 1373, the section of federal law that requires sharing citizenship and immigration status.
“The information whose sharing the Trust Act restricts (namely, release date and time and limited personally identifying information) falls squarely outside the ambit of section 1373,” the judge wrote.
Trump officials had also challenged a portion of Boston’s Trust Act that blocks the city from complying with deportation “detainer” requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Those requests ask other agencies to hold a migrant for pickup by ICE.
Judge Sorokin said even if he were to overturn the Trust Act, Massachusetts’s state sanctuary law would still bar city authorities from complying with detainers.
And since the feds didn’t sue the state but only city officials, the state law is beyond the scope of his case. So since he couldn’t grant the relief the Justice Department wants, the federal government “lacks standing” to bring the case.
The case is the latest in a series of losses for the Justice Department in its challenge to sanctuary policies.
In New York, a judge rejected DOJ’s challenge to a state law prohibiting immigration arrests at state courthouses.
And DOJ has failed in challenges to sanctuary laws in Colorado and Illinois.
It also saw judges refuse to allow the federal government to withhold money from jurisdictions with sanctuary policies.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin this week said he’s drawing up a new pressure campaign on sanctuaries that would halt processing of passengers on international flights in airports located in sanctuary jurisdictions.
He said if communities refuse to cooperate on arresting foreign illegal immigrants in their borders, then DHS can refuse to cooperate in processing the legal foreign travelers that boost those economies.
