Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed a bill on Wednesday to limit local cooperation with immigration agencies and curtail Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities in the Bay State. Local lawmakers and advocates have called the measure, which they have dubbed the PROTECT Act, one of the most expansive of its kind in the United States.
The legislation bans warrantless civil immigration arrests from courthouses, public schools, and healthcare facilities in Massachusetts. It prohibits new 287(g) agreements – partnerships between ICE and police departments that allow local officers to perform some immigration enforcement. The law also bars police officers from routinely asking about citizenship status.
Blue states nationwide have moved to limit immigration actions as President Donald Trump has pushed forward with his mass deportation agenda. In May, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a budget bill that similarly prohibited ICE arrests in sensitive locations, limited immigration personnel’s use of face coverings, and banned new 287(g) agreements. Other states, including California, Virginia, and Maryland, have passed similar legislation.
Why We Wrote This
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed into law Wednesday a bill that immigration advocates say is one of the nation’s most expansive efforts to narrow state cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
“The passage of the PROTECT Act sends a clear message that Massachusetts will continue to stand for fairness, due process, and human dignity,” state Sen. Pavel Payano, a Democrat, said in a public statement after the bill passed the legislature.
The new law codifies a 2017 ruling by the Bay State’s highest court that prohibited local police from honoring ICE detainer requests. Detainers are nonbinding requests from ICE to local law enforcement to hold arrestees believed to have violated immigration law, so that ICE officials can arrest them at local jails. Massachusetts has several jurisdictions, including cities and counties, that are often called sanctuary cities because they limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and do not honor detainers.
The law leaves in place a long-standing agreement between ICE and the state’s Department of Correction. That partnership allows for the transfer into ICE custody of people who have finished their prison sentences and have an outstanding deportation order.
This year, several Massachusetts cities, including Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, moved to limit warrantless immigration arrests after the deadly shootings of U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal immigration personnel in Minneapolis.
The Trump administration has long said sanctuary policies illegally impede the federal government’s constitutional power to enforce immigration law. Last year, the Justice Department sued Boston over its Trust Act, a municipal ordinance that prohibits local police from honoring detainers and limits cooperation with immigration enforcement. A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit, but the government has appealed.
“This is a lawless insurrection against the supremacy of Federal law and the Federal Government’s obligation to defend the territorial sovereignty of the United States,” President Trump wrote in a 2025 executive order targeting sanctuary cities.
The PROTECT Act also authorizes Massachusetts to audit any sheriff’s department’s activities involving ICE, as well as immigration detention facilities in the state. Last year, immigrant lawyers and activists condemned the ICE field office in Burlington, Massachusetts, which was being used to hold detainees, for “abysmal” conditions.
Laws similar to the PROTECT Act have inspired federal pushback elsewhere. In June, the Justice Department sued Virginia over its law, which bans federal agents from wearing face coverings while performing official duties and limits local cooperation with immigration enforcement. The department also sued New Mexico in May over a law prohibiting public entities from contracting with ICE to hold immigration detainees. Those lawsuits are ongoing.