President Donald Trump said on Oct. 23 that he won’t send federal agents to San Francisco this week. He had planned to send agents to the city in a crackdown on illegal immigration and violent crime, but called off the plans after speaking to the city’s mayor about recent efforts by local law enforcement to bring down crime.
Trump said that while he told Lurie he thought the mayor was “making a mistake,” suggesting federal agents could bring down crime faster and “remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove,” he decided to give Lurie a chance to see how he does.
“The people of San Francisco have come together on fighting Crime, especially since we began to take charge of that very nasty subject. Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great,” Trump said. “They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a press conference shortly after Trump’s post that “the president is willing to work with anyone across the aisle, across the country to do the right thing and clean up America’s cities.”
Trump said hours later during a roundtable meeting with his Cabinet that several business leaders from the tech industry told him they were “working really, really hard with the mayor” to decrease crime in the Bay Area.
“I had four or five calls, and I think they’re making progress of their own. That would be the greatest. I mean, if they could do that, that’d be great,” Trump said. “So we are holding off that surge, everybody, and we’re going to let them see if they can do it.”
The president added that if his agreement with local officials in San Francisco “doesn’t work out,” he will send in federal agents to the Bay Area to “do it for you very quickly.”
Trump had said in a Fox News interview that aired on Oct. 19 that San Francisco would be the next city to see federal immigration enforcement operations.
“We’re going to make it great. It’ll be great again. San Francisco is a great city. It won’t be great if it keeps going like this,” he said.
Before Trump’s post announcing a decision to pull back the deployment of federal agents in San Francisco, Lurie and California Gov. Gavin Newsom had accused the Trump administration of attempting to provoke violent protests.
The Coast Guard had said on Wednesday that it was providing a base of operations for Customs and Border Protection Agents in the San Francisco Bay area for federal immigration enforcement operations.
“Through a whole of government approach, we are leveraging our unique authorities and capabilities to detect, deter, and interdict illegal aliens, narco-terrorists, and individuals intent on terrorism or other hostile activity before they reach our border,” the Coast Guard said in a statement.
Following reports of the deployment of federal troops to the Bay Area, Lurie livestreamed a statement from City Hall, where he warned against giving federal officials who might be working from “a playbook” any excuse for a crackdown.
During a separate press conference on Thursday, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said that despite Trump’s post about his call to Lurie and intentions to remove the Bay Area from his list of areas to see deployment of federal agents, local officials still “have no idea” what the Trump administration is or isn’t planning.
“This is very fluid, and so there’s no information we can bring to you today, to bring you up to date on what plans they have in place. But we are moving forward with our plans and we are prepared,” she said.
“The federal administration, of course, has escalated its rhetoric and its enforcement posture in the Bay Area. We know that border patrol agents are being stationed on Coast Guard island, but let me be clear, our city, as I said, we are fully prepared. We’re monitoring developments closely and will keep our residents informed if there are any confirmed changes.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has backed Newsom’s repeated threats to take action.
“I am deeply grateful to the members of our military for their service to our country, but the National Guard does not have the authority to arrest drug dealers—and sending them to San Francisco will do nothing to get fentanyl off the streets or make our city safer,” Lurie said in a statement.
Crime in San Francisco is at its lowest point in 23 years, Police Chief Bill Scott told reporters in January.
“Across the board, with violent crime from robberies to shootings to homicides to sexual assaults, they’re all down,” he said, adding that violent crime and property crime were down by double digits from 2023.
The rate dropped by 30 percent in Oakland and 22 percent in San Francisco, year over year.
“Through meaningful and significant funding investments and partnerships with local law enforcement and community groups—our crime is down,” Newsom said in a statement. “Although good enough never is, we will keep working together to help keep Californians safe.”
Lear Zhou and Jacki Thrapp contributed to this report.
