President Donald Trump said he will not send federal agents into San Francisco after several reports stated he was. The president made the announcement in a Truth Social post on Thursday.
In his post, Trump said friends of his “who live in the area” called him to say they didn’t want him to send more than 100 federal agents into the city. He said that he spoke with San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie on Wednesday and “gave him a chance” to fix crime in the area.
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“I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around,” Trump wrote. “I told him I think he is making a mistake, because we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove.”
The president also said that the city has “come together” to tackle crime and stated the push started after he began using federal authorities to arrest criminals in major cities.
What was the original plan for San Francisco?
Before Trump made his announcement, reports stated his administration would deploy more than 100 federal agents for a major immigration enforcement effort in the San Francisco area.
Sources familiar with the effort told the San Francisco Chronicle that agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were slated to arrive Thursday at Coast Guard Base Alameda near Oakland.
The White House did not release specifics of the operation, but the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and CBP, released a statement to CBS News regarding the development.
“DHS is targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens — including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists — in cities such as Portland, Chicago, Memphis and San Francisco,” the spokesperson stated. “As it does every day, DHS law enforcement will enforce the laws of our nation.”
Trump may invoke the Insurrection Act
President Donald Trump has also suggested that he may invoke the Insurrection Act, a measure that allows presidents to deploy troops on American soil.
Trump has already sent National Guard troops to Chicago, Memphis, Portland and Washington, and has deployed both the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles. He said the deployments were necessary to quell protests, protect ICE facilities and combat “out of control” crime — even though most of those cities have recorded significantly lower crime rates in recent years.
In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Trump indicated that San Francisco was the next target.
“We’re going to San Francisco and we’ll make it great,” Trump said. “It’ll be great again. San Francisco is a great city. It won’t be great if it keeps going like this. We’re going to San Francisco. The difference is they want us in San Francisco.”
Federal intervention unwelcome
Lurie, a Democrat, said earlier this week that dispatching troops to his city would not help combat the drug crisis, adding that soldiers were not legally authorized to arrest drug dealers.
City Attorney David Chiu has threatened to sue the Trump administration to prevent the potential deployment of any troops to San Francisco.
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Violent crime in San Francisco is down substantially since 2019, below the national average, while property crime is slowly falling but still above the average.
The region’s congressional representatives — Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Kevin Mullin, both Democrats — strongly oppose the surge of immigration enforcement by ICE and CBP.
They indicated on Wednesday that local authorities may arrest federal agents who break California law while performing immigration raids in the San Francisco area.
“While the President may enjoy absolute immunity courtesy of his rogue Supreme Court, those who operate under his orders do not,” the representatives said in a statement. “Our state and local authorities may arrest federal agents if they break California law — and if they are convicted, the President cannot pardon them.”
Scholars question legality of threat
Legal scholars interviewed by The New York Times said that the arrest of federal agents may not be plausible if they are performing official duties. But lawsuits are possible if they are found to have violated the law while conducting immigration raids.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, parts of California have different rules governing how aggressively federal immigration agents can detain and deport unauthorized immigrants.
