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BPD ignored all requests from ICE to detain immigrants last year
The Boston Police Department reported a major increase in the number of detainer requests it received from ICE in 2025.
The Boston Police Department received 57 total detainer requests from ICE in 2025 and ignored all of them, according to a letter Commissioner Michael Cox sent to the city clerk earlier this month.
Detainer requests are used by ICE when the agency becomes aware of “removable aliens” that are being held by local law enforcement officials. ICE regularly lodges these requests with local police departments to notify them that a person in their custody is able to be deported. They ask that local police hold the person in question for extra time beyond when they would normally be released so that ICE officers can assume custody of them before they are released back into their communities.
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But many jurisdictions across America, including Boston, have laws on the books that limit how local police can interact with federal officials when it comes to civil immigration enforcement. These are often referred to as “sanctuary” policies. Under the Boston Trust Act, BPD is prohibited from detaining people solely because ICE has filed a detainer request. The department does not enforce immigration law and officers do not ask about the immigration status of people they interact with.
There are also similar limitations at the state level. In 2017, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that local law enforcement officials do not have the authority to hold people based solely on immigration detainers.
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ICE still files these detainers with BPD, and the department is obligated to make note of each one and report statistics to city officials at the end of each calendar year. In his letter, Cox listed the date of each detainer request and how it was received by the department. It does not include information about specific detainees.
The reason given for all the 2025 requests was that the Department of Homeland Security had “determined that probable cause exists that the subject is a removable alien,” according to the letter.
The Trust Act does not limit BPD from working with ICE on matters of “significant public safety importance” such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, and cybercrimes.
The Boston City Council unanimously reaffirmed its support for the Trust Act in anticipation of President Donald Trump’s return to office.
Detainer requests were sent to BPD relatively consistently throughout 2025, beginning in early February. Nine requests were sent last September, the most of any month. No one was transferred to ICE custody as the result of a detainer request, according to Cox’s letter.
The 57 detainer requests reported by BPD in 2025 is a major uptick from the 15 detainer requests the department said it received in 2024.
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BPD and ICE reported two different figures for 2024. ICE said that it sent BPD a whopping 198 detainer requests in 2024. BPD officials said that the large discrepancy was because ICE only filed the requests via fax machine, despite being asked to send them to a centralized email address.
In response to this confusion, Cox established a dedicated fax line solely for detainer requests. He issued a special order last February clarifying the exact procedures for processing the requests.
BPD requested that ICE only use the dedicated fax line to send requests. But only 28% of requests received in 2025 came through the fax line, according to Cox. Others were sent directly to specific booking locations or via email to BPD’s Bureau of Field Services.
As the Trump administration ramped up its mass deportation campaign last year, Cox and Mayor Michelle Wu remained on the same page in terms of handling immigration enforcement. Both are proponents of the Trust Act, arguing that it makes communities safer by ensuring immigrants are not afraid of reporting crimes to local police.
The Trump administration is suing Boston, arguing that policies like the Trust Act are illegal and result in the release of dangerous criminals back on to the streets.
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Trump and officials within DHS and ICE are struggling to contain the fallout of their aggressive operation in Minneapolis. Tensions in the Twin Cities erupted further over the weekend after federal agents swarmed and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old registered nurse. He is the second citizen to be shot dead by federal agents there this month, after the killing of Renee Good.
The Wu administration joined other city governments from across the country to file a legal brief last week in support of a lawsuit that seeks to end the operation in Minneapolis, saying that ICE is leading a “military occupation” of the Twin Cities.
“After another gruesome act of fatal violence by federal agents on the streets of Minneapolis, all Americans must demand that the Trump Administration end its deadly, unlawful, and unconstitutional occupation of the Twin Cities,” Wu said in a statement responding to Pretti’s death.
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