By Carolyn Jones, CalMatters
After a tense night in the Bay Area, President Trump called off a planned “surge” of federal immigration agents in San Francisco after friends persuaded him to back down.
“Great people like (Nvidia president) Jensen Huang, (Salesforce chief executive) Marc Benioff and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great,” the president wrote on social media. “They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday.”
The announcement followed a nerve-wracking night for Bay Area immigrants and others. Wednesday afternoon, Trump deployed about 100 federal agents to a military base in the East Bay in preparation for a high-profile and long-threatened immigration crackdown.
Agents were expected to raid local Home Depot stores, where undocumented workers often congregate, over the next few days, local news outlets reported.
“We’re going to go to San Francisco,” Trump told a Fox News reporter on Sunday. “The difference is, I think they want us in San Francisco. San Francisco was truly one of the great cities of the world, and then 15 years ago, it went wrong. It went woke.”
Protesters throughout the Bay Area began amassing on Thursday, starting with a pre-dawn gathering blocking the entrance to Coast Guard Island in Alameda, where the federal agents were expected to arrive. Agents deployed an apparent flash-bang grenade to disperse the crowd, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Elsewhere, protesters planned to gather at San Jose City Hall, San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza and other locations.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said on social media that Trump called him Wednesday night.
“I told him the same thing I told our residents: San Francisco is on the rise,” Lurie wrote. “We have work to do, and we would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Attorney to get drugs and drug dealers off our streets, but having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery.
“In that conversation, the president told me clearly that he was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco,” Lurie continued. “Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reaffirmed that direction in our conversation this morning.”
State and local authorities had been anticipating the raids and had stern words for the Trump administration and vowed to take action to protect residents.
“We’re a nation of laws and accountability — not a nation that turns a blind eye to abuse of power,” Newsom said in a statement. “We don’t bow to kings, and we’re standing up to this wannabe tyrant. The notion that the federal government can deploy troops into our cities with no justification grounded in reality, no oversight, no accountability, no respect for state sovereignty — it’s a direct assault on the rule of law.”
Newsom characterized the deployment as an attempt at voter suppression, as Californians vote on Proposition 50 to redraw congressional maps in favor of Democrats. Newsom put the measure on the ballot to counter Republican gerrymandering in Texas that was meant to help Trump keep a GOP majority in the House of Representatives. Less than two weeks before Election Day, the race remains close.
Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta promised to sue the federal government to stop National Guard troops from deploying to San Francisco. So far, the administration’s heightened presence in the Bay Area appeared limited to immigration enforcement.
“There is no basis to send National Guard troops to San Francisco. No emergency. No rebellion. No invasion. Not even unrest,” Bonta said in a statement. “Trump has made no secret of his intentions: To use our National Guard as his own Royal Army and our cities as a training ground for the military. This is outrageous, indefensible, and most importantly illegal.”
San Francisco, Oakland and several other cities in the Bay Area are so-called sanctuary cities, which limits how local law enforcement officers interact with federal immigration agents. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she would prosecute federal agents who used excessive force or otherwise violated local laws.
Trump has used crime data as a justification for potentially sending troops to San Francisco and other left-leaning cities. But San Francisco’s crime rate is down significantly in most categories. Oakland, which historically has had some of the country’s highest violent crime rates, has also seen a steep drop in most types of crime this year.
One of the most diverse regions in the country, the Bay Area has a robust immigrant population – roughly 30%, according to the Bay Area Equity Atlas. The majority come from Latin America and Asia, but thousands also come from Iran, Russia and Canada. At least 457,000 lack legal status, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Carolyn Jones covers K-12 education at CalMatters. A longtime news reporter, she’s covered education for nearly a decade, focusing on everything from special education to state funding policies to inequities in student achievement. She’s won numerous awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association, and was a finalist in 2020 for beat reporter of the year (small newsroom) by the Education Writers Association. Folsom Times is an authorized CalMatters media partner in an effort to keep our local community informed on statewide matters across the region.
