Trump poised to send scores of federal agents to San Francisco | Trump administration
The Trump administration appeared poised to send dozens of federal agents to the San Francisco Bay Area for a major immigration enforcement operation on Wednesday, prompting condemnation from California leaders.
Details of the deployment are still emerging, but it will reportedly involve more than 100 federal agents. based on To the San Francisco Chronicle. agents reportedly set Beginning to use the US Coast Guard base in the city of Alameda, located across the bay from San Francisco. It is not yet clear whether national guard troops will also be involved in the incident.
The deployment follows weeks of threats from Donald Trump to target the Democratic-run city. California governor Gavin Newsom criticized the move, calling it “straight out of the dictator’s handbook.”
“He’s sending masked men, he’s sending Border Patrol, he’s sending ICE, he’s creating anxiety and fear in the community so he can claim to solve this. [national] guard” Newsom he said in a video description. “This is no different than an arsonist putting out a fire.”
State Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, who represents Alameda, condemned the arrival of federal agents in her district as “authoritarian theater.”
“Using our city as a staging ground to spread fear, terrorism and state-sponsored violence across the Bay is contrary to our values as Alamedans.”
San Francisco is the latest major city targeted by Donald Trump’s campaign of mass immigration arrests. The distribution is expected to trigger a showdown between the administration and local leaders, who have vowed to curb militarized immigration enforcement in the city.
San Franciscans have been preparing for months for Trump to follow through on his repeated threats to send troops to the city. on wednesday afternoon press conferenceSan Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie reiterated that the city is prepared.
“For months, we have been anticipating the possibility of some type of federal deployment in our city,” Lurie said, adding that he was taking other administrative steps Wednesday to “strengthen the city’s support for our immigrant communities and ensure our departments are coordinated in advance of any federal deployment.”
Despite legal challenges to deploying troops in several cities, including Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles, Trump claimed he had the “unquestionable authority” to deploy the national guard to cities, citing the Insurrection Act, which allows the president limited authority to deploy troops on U.S. soil.
Newsom, who previously served as mayor of San Francisco, had vowed to respond “immediately” to a deployment in the city. “The idea that the federal government can deploy troops into our cities with no factual justification, without any oversight, without any accountability, without respect for state sovereignty is a direct attack on the rule of law,” he said in a statement Wednesday.
Community groups, including Bay Resistance, a nonprofit social justice organization founded during the first Trump administration, quickly prepared to hold vigils at local libraries as well as a mass rally in the city.
In San Francisco’s Mission district, a predominantly Latino community, city supervisor Jackie Fielder told reporters last week that she and her constituents were preparing for this moment.
“The moment people stop going to work, the moment anyone Black or brown can’t go out freely without fear of Trump’s federal agents racially profiling and arresting them, the moment parents stop sending their kids to school, the moment they will be afraid to go to the grocery store or the doctor,” Fielder said. “What we are preparing for at the mission is essentially a shutdown that we haven’t seen since Covid.”
About 300 of California’s 4,000 national guard troops have been federalized under Trump’s order. About 200 of them had been sent to Oregon, where they sat in limbo amid a legal battle over their deployment.
This week, Newsom said he was calling in California National Guard troops under his control to staff food banks during the government shutdown.
