The cities of Somerville and Chelsea filed a lawsuit in the Massachusetts District Court on Monday seeking relief from two White House executive orders targeting sanctuary cities, per a City of Somerville memo.
As sanctuary cities, Somerville and Chelsea have laws on the books protecting marginalized communities. Somerville declared itself a sanctuary city in 1987 and now refers to itself as a “welcoming city.” Chelsea declared its sanctuary status in 2007. The cities say they are resisting Trump administration efforts to coerce cities into participating in mass immigrant deportation efforts.
“President Trump and his agencies have said in no uncertain terms that he plans to strip federal funding from sanctuary cities. So it is quite clear that this is imminent. This is happening right now. And it needs to stop,” said Oren Sellstrom, litigation director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, at a 2 p.m. press conference at Chelsea City Hall. The organization is the city’s legal representative in the fight. “I have every confidence that we will prevail.”
The suit filed with Lawyers for Civil Rights names Donald J. Trump as well as the departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Transportation. The heads of each department, Pamela Bondi, Kristi Noem and Sean Duffy, are also named, as is Bondi’s deputy attorney general, Emil Bove.
The suit cites three executive orders passed in January and February and several internal memos that together endow the departments with broad authority to monitor sanctuary cities and limit their access to federal funds.
“This attempt to bully sanctuary cities into mass deportation isn’t just a lazy approach that avoids the real work of needed immigration reform. It makes our communities less safe, damages our economy, drives up prices and, as our complaints argue, blatantly violates the U.S. Constitution,” Ballantyne said at Chelsea City Hall. “This lawsuit is just two smaller cities doing [what we can] to fight in court against this giant – frankly embarrassing – abuse of power.”
Arguments in the suit
In their complaint, the cities of Somerville and Chelsea call the actions “threats and intimidation” that amount to an “aggressive campaign to undermine the authority of local governments to make these local determinations.”
They say that they rely on federal funding “to fill critical budgetary needs.” Somerville received $19.4 million in federal funding in fiscal year 2024, which it says supported projects focused on homelessness prevention, road safety and youth alcohol and tobacco usage. Chelsea received $14.5 million, which it says supported projects in education and downtown revitalization.
Without it, their communities will suffer, the complaint argues.
“Our residents know that our community is safer when police focus on preventing crime and leave federal immigration enforcement to the feds,” Somerville mayor Katjana Ballantyne said in the memo. “We know that stripping localities of their right to lawful local policies erodes everyone’s rights. And we know politicized withholding of federal funding threatens the health and safety of all residents, be it your neighbor who relies on Meals on Wheels for dinner or your kids who need road investments for a safer walk to school.”
Chelsea city manager Fidel Maltez agreed: “Public safety is the top priority for the City of Chelsea – we cannot afford to have our residents fear reporting crimes or engaging with local law enforcement, as this undermines the safety of everyone in our community.”
Two of several with sanctuary status
Chelsea and Somerville are two of 14 cities in Massachusetts that have declared some form of sanctuary status. The other dozen, which include neighboring Cambridge, Arlington, Boston, Brookline and Newton, were not named as taking part in the suit. Community representatives have been contacted for comment.
The two cities acted together based on a long partnership and did not reach out to include other communities, Sellstrom said, but by suing together did not mean to exclude its neighbors.
In her speech in Chelsea, which was translated into Spanish immediately afterward to a chamber filled with residents and media, Ballantyne drew applause in remarks that “our new federal administration wants to strip us of our constitutional right to direct our own local police resources as best serves our community, all the way from Washington.”
“They want to order our local police to take time away from preventing crimes like home burglaries or assaults, and instead carry out mass deportations. They want to tell our traffic cops to shift time away from making sure kids get safely to school and workers to their jobs and to instead carry out family separation. They want our brave police officers to reduce resources for protecting victims of domestic violence or for stopping drunk drivers and instead to raid our great schools, workplaces, hospitals and churches,” Ballantyne said. “But unless we abandon our lawful policies, unless we take on federal job immigration enforcement, unless we accept this unfunded mandate, unless we storm the local sandwich shops, they say they’ll take away our federal funds – funds that we pay taxes for.”
Judy Pineda Neufeld, Somerville’s City Council president, also spoke, as well as Norieliz DeJesus, Chelsea’s City Council president.
DeJesus called the Trump administration’s attempt to strip funding “a direct attack on our families and our values, fairness, inclusion, compassion.”
“We will not be bullied into turning our back on our families,” DeJesus said.
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