Boston police declined 57 ICE detainer requests in 2025 under city Trust Act limits

Annual report details continued noncompliance with federal civil detainer requests

The Boston Police Department received 57 civil immigration detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2025 and did not honor any of them, city officials reported in a required year-end filing. Police Commissioner Michael Cox provided the figures in a letter submitted to the City Clerk as part of annual reporting under Boston’s Trust Act.

ICE detainers are requests asking local law enforcement to hold someone beyond the time they would otherwise be released so federal immigration officers can assume custody. In Boston, city rules prohibit police from extending a person’s detention solely because of a civil immigration detainer.

What Boston’s Trust Act allows—and prohibits

Boston’s Trust Act was enacted in 2014 and later amended in 2019. It bars Boston police from detaining people on the basis of civil immigration enforcement tools such as detainer requests or administrative warrants, unless there is a judicial warrant or other court-ordered basis to hold someone.

The ordinance carves out areas where the Boston Police Department may collaborate with federal authorities on matters framed as significant public safety concerns. The policy distinguishes civil immigration enforcement from criminal investigations involving serious offenses.

• BPD may not hold an individual past their release time based solely on a civil immigration detainer request.
• The Trust Act permits coordination on certain investigations such as trafficking, child exploitation, and cybercrime-related matters.

State legal backdrop: limits on detention authority

Boston’s approach also aligns with a 2017 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that found Massachusetts law does not provide authority for state officers to arrest and hold an individual solely on the basis of a federal civil immigration detainer beyond the time the person would otherwise be entitled to release. That decision addressed civil detainers specifically and did not create new detention authority for local agencies.

A sharp increase from prior years, and disputes over counting

The 57 detainer requests reported for 2025 represent a notable increase from the 15 requests the department said it received in 2024. City records have also reflected lower totals in earlier years, including 2023 and 2022.

In previous reporting cycles, disputes emerged over how many requests were actually transmitted and received. ICE and the police department have cited different counts for at least one prior year, with disagreements tied to how requests were delivered and tracked.

Changes to processing and transmission

In response to earlier discrepancies, the commissioner established a dedicated process for detainer requests, including a centralized fax line and internal procedures intended to standardize how requests are logged. The 2025 letter includes dates of detainer transmissions and the channels through which they arrived, but does not name individuals or describe underlying cases.

The report provides aggregate compliance outcomes but does not identify detainees or specify whether any cases involved separate judicial warrants.

Policy and legal pressure remains unresolved

The reporting comes amid continued national scrutiny of municipal policies that limit participation in federal civil immigration enforcement. Boston officials have maintained that the Trust Act is designed to delineate local public safety policing from federal civil immigration functions, while ICE has continued to issue detainer requests to the department.

The 2025 totals indicate that detainer activity increased, even as the city’s compliance stance remained unchanged under its ordinance and Massachusetts legal precedent.