New England voted largely Democratic in the 2024 election that saw Donald Trump re-elected to the U.S. presidency, but there are differences in how the states are approaching his policies on immigration.
See our map showing how Trump’s mass deportation is occurring in New England.
In Maine, the state legislature passed a bill in June 2025 aimed at limiting how state and local law enforcement cooperate with federal immigration authorities. At the time, Gov. Janet Mills called the bill “overly broad and confusing,” and held it over until the next legislative session. But in December, Mills announced she would let the bill become law without her signature, saying that, while imperfect, it was one way to push back against what she calls “ICE’s unacceptable actions.”
For years Vermont law has required all law enforcement agencies to adopt a “fair and impartial policing” policy, which among other things, prohibits Vermont police from enforcing civil immigration law. The policy bars state and local police from asking about a person’s immigration status unless it’s relevant to a criminal investigation. Vermont law enforcement officers are also limited in when they can share identifying information about a person, like their physical address or license plate information, with federal immigration authorities.
While the Trump administration has identified Vermont as a “sanctuary state,” Gov. Phil Scott has rejected that label, asserting that the state “does not have any law or policy that impedes the enforcement of federal immigration law.”
In Massachusetts, the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2017 that local law enforcement officers have no legal authority to arrest, detain or hold an individual based solely on a federal civil immigration detainer. Cities and towns such as Boston, Amherst, Cambridge, Chelsea, Concord, Newton, Northampton and Somerville have passed local laws limiting their police departments’ involvement in federal civil immigration enforcement. The Trump administration sued Boston over its Trust Act in September and Boston has asked a judge to dismiss that lawsuit. Similarly, sanctuary cities sued the Trump administration for threatening to cut them off from federal funds in response to their stance on assisting civil immigration enforcement.
Connecticut has had a statewide Trust Act in place since it was passed by lawmakers in 2013. It limits how local and state law enforcement interact with ICE authorities by restricting information sharing between agencies, such as a person’s immigration status. When President Trump returned to office in early 2025, advocates launched a campaign to strengthen the act. Lawmakers were considering a bill that would bring about even more limits in communication between Connecticut law enforcement and ICE authorities. It was heavily debated and led to updates to the state’s Trust Act in October, placing those limitations on all state and municipal employees, as well as criminal prosecutors. People are now able to sue local municipalities and police departments in Connecticut for violating the Trust Act under the newest update to the law.
In a special legislative session this November, Connecticut lawmakers passed legislation that limits immigration arrests on courthouse grounds without a signed judicial warrant. It also bars law enforcement officers from wearing facing coverings in court without a medical need. The move comes after an uptick in ICE apprehensions around courthouses in Connecticut, including an arrest that took place inside a courthouse in Stamford.
In November 2025, the Providence City Council unanimously passed new immigration and policing reforms to the Community-Police Relations Act, which restrict Providence Police Department officers’ ability to assist federal immigration enforcement. The federal Department of Homeland Security has also claimed that Rhode Island is defying national immigration policy.
RI’s ACLU Executive Director Steven Brown said in an interview with Rhode Island Current the reasoning for the administration’s attitude could be a 2014 federal court order. It ruled that police officers in Rhode Island cannot hold a person in custody based upon just a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer for more than 48 hours. The state’s Attorney General, Peter Nerona, has also taken part in multiple cross-state lawsuits against the administration’s immigration policy reforms.
New Hampshire is an outlier in the Democratic-controlled region and is following the legislative trends of Republican states in other parts of the country. The Republican-controlled State House passed two laws in 2025 requiring local police departments to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. These had strong support from Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a former Attorney General with long-standing ties to law enforcement.
New Hampshire was also part of a wave of Republican states that passed legislation to invalidate certain out-of-state drivers licenses “issued by another state exclusively to undocumented immigrants who are unable to prove lawful presence in the United States when the licenses are issued.” In practice, this means that the law only invalidates this class of license in Delaware and Connecticut.
Ayotte has been vocal in her support for tougher immigration enforcement.
“We are the safest state in the nation. We’re going to continue to be that, and this is a big step forward,” she said in a bill signing ceremony. “There will be no sanctuary cities in New Hampshire. Period. End of story.”
Copyright 2025 New England News Collaborative
