🔗 Share this article

The White House seemed ready on Wednesday to dispatch dozens of law enforcement personnel to the Bay Area region for a major crackdown on immigration, prompting criticism from California leaders.

Information of the Mission

Details of the operation were gradually becoming clear, but it will allegedly feature more than 100 law enforcement personnel, according to reports. The agents are expected to begin using the Coast Guard facility in Alameda, facing San Francisco. It was not confirmed whether state soldiers would also be involved.

Political Backlash

The mission is the result of an extended period of warnings by Donald Trump to take action against the progressive municipality. Governor Gavin Newsom criticized the decision, describing it as “taken directly from the dictator’s handbook”.

“He dispatches unidentified officers, he deploys border agents, he dispatches ICE, he creates worry and terror in the community so that he can lay claim for solving that by deploying the national guard,” Newsom said. “This is exactly like the arsonist extinguishing the inferno.”

Local Readiness

San Francisco is the newest metropolitan center singled out by the administration's initiative of large-scale detentions. The deployment is anticipated to provoke a standoff between the administration and city officials who have pledged to stop militarized immigration enforcement in the city.

San Franciscans have been readying for weeks for Trump to fulfill ongoing warnings to dispatch personnel to the city. At a Wednesday public announcement, San Francisco’s municipal chief reiterated that the city was ready.

“During this period, we have been expecting the likelihood of an impending government operation in our city,” said the mayor, adding that he had implemented additional measures on Wednesday to “enhance the city’s protection of our foreign-born residents, and make certain our departments are coordinated before any government operation.”

Constitutional Background

Despite judicial disputes to deployments in a several municipalities, including the Windy City, Oregon and Los Angeles, Trump has declared “absolute authority” to dispatch the state troops in cities, referencing the federal statute which permits presidents limited power to dispatch personnel on domestic land.

Public Preparation

The governor, who previously served as San Francisco’s chief executive – had committed to intervene “right away” to a deployment in the city. “The concept that the federal government can dispatch personnel into our cities with no legitimate cause based on facts, no supervision, no answerability, no consideration of local authority – it represents an infringement on the rule of law,” he said on Wednesday.

Public associations, including social justice nonprofits established during the first Trump administration, have organized to rapidly assemble a large protest in the city, as well as candlelight gatherings at local libraries.

Neighborhood Effect

In San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, a largely Hispanic neighborhood, elected official stated to media last week she and her residents had been preparing for this moment. “The moment that people stop going to work, when anyone Black or brown can’t freely walk outside without the apprehension of Trump’s federal agents targeting based on race and apprehending them, the moment when parents stop sending kids to school, are too scared to go to the food market or medical provider,” she said. “The readiness efforts in the Mission is basically a shutdown the extent of which we haven’t seen since the pandemic.”

Military Status

About three hundred out of 4,000 California national guard troops stay under federal control under an command from Trump. Approximately two hundred of them had been transferred to the Pacific Northwest, where they were waiting in limbo in the midst of a legal battle over their deployment.

This time, Newsom said he had called the local soldiers under his authority to staff distribution centers amid the administrative stoppage.