Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Chair Edwards, Chair Day, and Members of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary:
Progressive Massachusetts is a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic. We urge you to give a favorable report to S.1122/H.1588: An Act relative to immigration detention and collaboration agreements and S.1127/H.1954: An Act ensuring access to equitable representation in immigration proceedings.
This Thanksgiving, families will be gathering across Massachusetts. But at many tables, there will be missing chairs due to the kidnapping of our immigrant friends and neighbors by ICE agents.
Since Trump took office in January, ICE has escalated its activities in Massachusetts, terrorizing immigrant communities. ICE arrests have gone up by more than 250% since last year, driven by their targeting of individuals without criminal records. ICE has brutalized children, torn families apart, and engaged in rampant racial profiling. With Congress approving $170 billion to expand deportations, this will only get worse.
Our immigrant communities are helping to keep our communities healthy, they are innovating and educating, and they are helping us build a better future for all of us. We need to do right by them.
Immigrants’ rights advocates from across the Commonwealth our aligned on what steps that you can take as a Legislature to protect communities:
- Prohibit new 287(g) agreements
Massachusetts should follow the steps of seven other states and prohibit any new 287(g) agreements. These agreements, in which state and local police are deputized as federal immigration agents, threaten public safety by diminishing trust, overburdening public financial and managerial capacity, distracting from real threats to public safety, and breaking apart communities.
- Prevent partnerships between local law enforcement and ICE
It’s simple: local law enforcement should be focused on keeping communities safe and preventing and investigating crime. Getting involved with immigration raids and arrests diverts time, money, and resources from this goal and undermines the trust on which public safety depends.
- Prohibit local law enforcement from asking about immigration status
If people fear that interacting with law enforcement could lead to the deportation of them or their loved ones, they will not feel comfortable doing so. This means that incidents of domestic violence, wage theft, and other abuses will go unreported, and communities will be less safe.
- Create a legal aid fund for immigrants at imminent risk of deportation
Access to counsel matters: detained immigrants with a lawyer are 10 times more likely to win their case than those without. Shockingly, a majority of immigrants with pending cases in MA are navigating their cases without a lawyer.
This bill would remedy that and build into statute an important step that your chambers took in the FY 2026 budget. Similar programs already exist in California, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington.
The Trump administration is creating never-ending, everyday crises for so many of our residents. Communities across the Commonwealth need you to lead.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts