Trump Admin to name and shame ‘sanctuary cities’ after new executive order

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing his attorney general to work up a list of so-called ‘sanctuary cities’ in the country, a rundown that could include Boston, and put them on notice they could lose funding or face other consequences.

Going forward, states, cities, and towns maintaining so-called sanctuary policies will be identified and publicly listed by the federal government, according to the new executive order signed by Trump, and may face a loss of federal funding if they don’t change their ways.

The order, penned into regulation by the president during a closed-press signing event at White House, will direct leading members of the administration to publish a list of sanctuary jurisdictions — several of which are found in the Bay State — where officials have allegedly impeded the enforcement of immigration laws.

Sanctuary policies, according to the president’s order, are “a lawless insurrection against the supremacy of Federal law and the Federal Government’s obligation to defend the territorial sovereignty of the United States.”

The signing comes after the president, earlier this month, declared that so-called sanctuary city “Death Traps” would soon be a thing of the past.

“No more Sanctuary Cities! They protect the Criminals, not the Victims. They are disgracing our Country, and are being mocked all over the World,” Trump wrote.

While there is no strict definition of what makes a municipality a “sanctuary jurisdiction,” the term is often used to describe a state, city, or town with policies which prevent local law enforcement agencies from attempting to enforce federal immigration laws or to hold prisoners or detainees longer than they normally would as a result of a civil detention request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Trump’s order defines them as those places “that obstruct the enforcement of Federal immigration laws.”

Boston, for example, is not a “sanctuary” city in name but the city’s Trust Act, passed in 2014, directs law enforcement not to ask about immigration status, make reports to ICE, or answer a civil immigration detainer.

Using that criteria, Massachusetts has upwards of nine sanctuary cities, including Amherst, Cambridge, Concord, Chelsea, Lawrence, Newton, Northampton, and Somerville — and Boston.

Beyond cities and towns, the state itself may make the Trump administration’s list, considering the state’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the 2017 Lunn decision that a civil detention request from federal immigration agents isn’t sufficient for a Massachusetts court to keep a person under arrest beyond their court imposed sentence or outside of normal holding guidelines.

“Massachusetts law provides no authority for Massachusetts court officers to arrest and hold an individual solely on the basis of a Federal civil immigration detainer, beyond the time that the individual would otherwise be entitled to be released from State custody,” the SJC ruled during Trump’s previous term.

Trump’s order gives Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem 30 days to come up with a list of sanctuary places, and then directs them to notify officials there that they are out of compliance with federal law.

Those that don’t come into compliance, will be identified to “the head of each executive department or agency, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget,” who “as permitted by law, shall identify appropriate Federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions, including grants and contracts, for suspension or termination, as appropriate.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a morning briefing alongside “border czar” Tom Homan that avoiding the consequences of being a sanctuary jurisdiction is “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. The American public do not want illegal criminals in their communities. This administration will enforce immigration laws,” Leavitt said.

This is not the first time that Trump has attempted to take aim at ‘sanctuary cities.

In 2017, Trump issued Executive Order 13,768, titled “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” which aimed to cut funding to “sanctuary jurisdictions.”

That executive order was met with an injunction blocking its enforcement after the city and county of San Francisco sued. The injunction was upheld in 2018 by the Ninth Circuit, and the executive order was rescinded by former President Joe Biden on the 46th president’s first day in office.

Since taking office a second time, Trump has signed EO 14,159, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” and EO 14,218, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders,” both of which attempt the same sort of funding halt.

Late last week a federal judge in the Northern District of California blocked both orders. The judge, William H. Orrick, noted in his injunction that he had previously blocked Trump’s attempts to single out cities over their local policies in 2017.

“Here we are again,” the judge wrote, before noting neither order attempted to define what a sanctuary city was, but nevertheless purported to cut “federal funding for cities, counties and states that the Trump administration deems to be sanctuary jurisdictions.”

“The challenged sections in the 2025 Executive Orders and the [Attorney General] Bondi Directive that order executive agencies to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funding apportioned to localities by Congress, violate the Constitution’s separation of powers principles and the Spending Clause, as explained by the Ninth Circuit in the earlier iteration of this case in 2018; they also violate the Fifth Amendment to the extent they are unconstitutionally vague and violate due process,” Orrick wrote.