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The Trump administration is massing more than 100 federal agents, including those from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, at a Coast Guard base on the San Francisco Bay, ahead of a long-threatened immigration crackdown in the city.
The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle, which first reported the news, that Coast Guard Base Alameda was preparing to serve as a “place of operations” for the agents.
A source familiar with the mission told ABC News the federal personnel would be engaged in an “immigration surge operation” in the region.
Agents are set to begin arriving on Wednesday and Thursday, officials familiar with the push told The New York Times.
The Trump administration has long threatened to send federal forces into San Francisco, following a string of deployments of federal immigration officers and National Guard troops across a series of mostly Democrat-led cities this year including Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; and Chicago.
“We’re going into San Francisco at the direction of the president,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Monday.
“We’re going to go to San Francisco next,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday. “The difference is, I think they want us in San Francisco.”
State and local leaders have, in fact, strongly criticized the administration for its threats to send federal agents on a law and order mission into the city, noting that violent crime rates are at their lowest levels since the 1950s.
In a video statement on Wednesday, California Governor and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom accused the Trump administration of trying to gin up chaos as a pretext to justify sending in the National Guard next, tactics “right out of the dictator’s handbook.”
“This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire,” Newsom said. “We need to call that out and we cannot play his game.”
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie also spoke out against the operation.
“We don’t know exactly what the federal government is planning in San Francisco and across the Bay Area,” he said in a statement on Wednesday. “But we do know this federal administration has a playbook. In cities across the country, masked immigration officials are deployed to use aggressive enforcement tactics that instill fear, so people don’t feel safe going about their daily lives.”
The mayor added that he cannot stop the federal government from enforcing federal law in the city, but said San Francisco will stick to their local law enforcement mission and ensure residents can utilize their First Amendment rights to peacefully protest if they choose.
The city has said it will sue the Trump administration if it attempts to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco.
Some in the region’s tech community, influential members of whom threw their support behind Trump this last election, have shown openness to federal intervention.
Marc Benioff, the formerly progressive billionaire CEO of Salesforce, said earlier this month he approved of sending National Guard troops into San Francisco to reduce crime, though he later apologized.
Immigration agents have already been active in the Bay Area, arresting at least 80 asylum seekers at San Francisco courthouses since May, according to the San Francisco Rapid Response Network, an immigrant advocacy group.
The Trump administration has repeatedly clashed with California officials on immigration.
The White House ignored local objections and federalized hundreds of California National Guard members over the summer to respond to anti-immigration raid protests in Los Angeles, prompting the state to sue.
A federal court in August found that the Trump administration’s actions had violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which largely bars military involvement in domestic law enforcement, though the ruling is on hold pending a federal appeal.
In the meantime, the Trump administration has tried to send hundreds of these now-federalized California Guardsmen to Portland, Oregon, for a similar crackdown, though that has also been paused in court.
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Federal agents conducting immigration sweeps in California have been accused of unlawful tactics.
A federal court determined that immigration officials in Southern California were indiscriminately profiling and arresting people based on race and language, though the Supreme Court last month overturned an injunction in the case.
In a different California district covering Sacramento and Kern County, a federal court barred immigration agents from racially profiling suspects based on their appearance and language, following what critics said were indiscriminate raids in farming communities at the beginning of the year.
In July, a U.S. attorney who warned a top Border Patrol officer leading the raids about the injunction in the face of continued operations in the region was abruptly dismissed.
