As federal agents are now arriving in the Bay Area, there are rallies and marches scheduled for Thursday afternoon and evening to protest whatever it is Trump’s goons may be planning to do.
The situation certainly has escalated in the last 24 hours, as President Trump dispatched some 100 federal agents to the Coast Guard Base in Alameda, for some sort of immigration enforcement operation that is also just clearly meant to provoke and intimidate Bay Area residents. SF Mayor Daniel Lurie made an urgent plea for calm Wednesday afternoon, but it was not terribly calm at the early Thursday morning protests in Alameda where two demonstrators were injured.
Those protests were going as early as 5 am, so clearly some planning has gone into the organized response. KGO reports that “Thousands of people logged onto Zoom Wednesday night for a call to action,” in a call organized by the group Bay Resistance. KTVU reports this resulted in the announcement of a Thursday rally and a separate march in SF. We also checked the site IndyBay, which tends to be a clearinghouse for such things.
Yesterday, I spoke to San Franciscans about a potential federal deployment in our city. I said then what I have said since taking office, that keeping San Franciscans safe is my top priority.
Late last night, I received a phone call from the President of the United States. I…
— Daniel Lurie 丹尼爾·羅偉 (@DanielLurie) October 23, 2025
Mayor Daniel Lurie announced at about 9:30 Thursday morning that Trump was “calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco.” But that’s fairly vague wording that could still allow for some sort of ICE or US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) agents on the streets here, and it does not preclude any East Bay operations. And also consider… Trump lies a lot!
So it’s a fair bet that Thursday’s scheduled rallies and marches are still happening. There is a 12 noon rally on the steps of City Hall City Hall, which Bay Resistance says will be livestream on their Instagram page.
That will be followed by a 5 pm rally and march starting at the Embarcadero late Thursday afternoon. “ICE has touched down & is gatheirn ther forces,” Bay Resistance announced. “We are gathering to show united opposition and that we are ready.”
According to IndyBay, Thursday will also see a San Jose: ICE Out of the Bay – Emergency Rally at 5 pm at San Jose Cty Hall. And on Friday, they list a 5 pm ICE out of the Bay! Solidarity Vigil in Palo Alto that is co-sponsored by the Penisula Raging Grannies.
From the looks of what we’ve seen with the agents in Alameda, it does not appear that these actions involve the National Guard, though Trump just won a legal victory to keep sending the guard to cities. And he uses the ruse that the guard becomes necessary to protect federal immigration agents, so we can’t count out the possibility that the National Guard will show up in SF, or elsewhere in the Bay Area, if any situations arise.
It’s unclear at ths point what we will see in the Bay Area today or this weekend, and federal agents’ presence thus far has reportedly been confined to Coast Guard Island in Alameda. But they’re in the Bay Area for some reason.
So Thursday may be a contentious day in SF and beyond, regardless of whether or not we see any federal agents dispatched.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
Image: @JoelFederman via Twitter