President Donald Trump will reportedly direct federal officials to develop a list of “sanctuary” cities and states that do not cooperate with immigration enforcement as he seeks to withhold funding from those jurisdictions.
The list could likely include Boston. The city is frequently a target of Republican officials for its refusal to fully comply with civil immigration operations by the federal government. Other cities with similar policies could also be listed.
The administration may also include Massachusetts as a whole, given court rulings limiting how local police in the Bay State cooperate with detention requests from immigration authorities.
Sanctuary policies have been a roadblock to the Trump administration as it’s tried to carry out a campaign pledge to mass-deport undocumented immigrants from the United States.
A federal judge last week blocked the administration from denying federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions while a lawsuit from more than a dozen cities aiming to maintain the funding plays out.
But an executive order expected to be signed Monday evening by Trump could further escalate that fight.
The order would give the U.S. attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security a month to identify cities and states that do not comply with federal immigration law, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported news of the looming order Monday.
The cities could then face withdrawn federal funding and potential criminal and civil action by the federal government if they do not change their policies, the paper reported.
“It’s quite simple: obey the law, respect the law and don’t obstruct federal immigration officials and law-enforcement officials when they are simply trying to remove public safety threats from our nation’s communities,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday.
“This administration is determined to enforce our nation’s immigration laws,” she added, flanked by Tom Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Homan, along with other administration officials, has repeatedly held up Boston as a leading example of the sanctuary city policies they hope to end.
In Boston, the city’s immigration policy is governed by a decade-old law, known as the Trust Act, that places limits on the Boston Police Department’s working relationship with ICE.
The law does not forbid local police from assisting the ICE division targeting criminal matters like drugs, weapons or human trafficking. But it prohibits police from cooperating with ICE on civil immigration enforcement or asking people about their immigration status.
City officials, including Mayor Michelle Wu and Police Commissioner Michael Cox, have said the law allows immigrants to feel comfortable contacting police without fear of deportation, leaving the city safer.
In March, Wu took the message to the national stage, sparring with Congressional Republicans at a hearing addressing the immigration policies in Boston and three other high-profile so-called sanctuary cities.
Speaking to the Journal on Monday, Wu said the executive order wouldn’t change policies in the city.
“The courts have backed us up on this as well,” she told the newspaper.
Boston and other Bay State cities are also guided by a ruling from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court barring police from detaining someone based solely on a request from ICE, and not a criminal warrant.
In a second executive order, Trump also reportedly planned to direct the Justice Department to open civil rights cases against cities and states that his administration says favor illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens.
According to the Journal, the proposed order references laws that treat people in the country illegally more leniently in criminal cases or sentencing. It also cited state laws allowing immigrants living in the U.S. illegally to pay in-state tuition at public universities while denying the lower tuition rates to out-of-state students who are U.S. citizens.
In Massachusetts, the Tuition Equity Law allows students who completed at least three years of high school in-state and received a high school diploma to receive in-state tuition at public universities, largely regardless of immigration status, according to state officials.
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