{"id":20191,"date":"2025-10-23T21:39:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T21:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/20191\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T21:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T21:39:08","slug":"trump-calls-off-san-francisco-surge-but-east-bay-braces-for-action-as-protests-erupt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/20191\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump calls off San Francisco ‘surge,’ but East Bay braces for action as protests erupt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

OAKLAND\u00a0\u2014\u00a0President Trump said Thursday that he had called off a planned federal \u201csurge\u201d<\/a> into San Francisco after speaking with Mayor Daniel Lurie and other city leaders \u2014 a detente that officials and activists in the East Bay said they were not welcomed into and viewed with some suspicion, as potentially enlarging the target on their own communities.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s announcement came amid protests at the entrance to the U.S. Coast Guard base across the bay in Alameda County, where the Department of Homeland Security has begun staging additional forces<\/a>. It followed a similar announcement by Lurie, who said he had told Trump during a phone call late Wednesday that San Francisco is \u201con the rise\u201d and that \u201chaving the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lurie said Trump agreed to call off any federal deployment to the city, and that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem \u2014 who is in charge of federal immigration forces \u2014 had \u201creaffirmed that direction\u201d in a conversation with him Thursday morning.<\/p>\n

Trump said on social media<\/a> that his administration had been planning a \u201csurge\u201d in San Francisco beginning Saturday, but that Lurie had asked him \u201cvery nicely\u201d to \u201cgive him a chance to see if he can turn it around,\u201d and that other \u201cfriends\u201d of Trump\u2019s in the city had asked him to call it off because they believe Lurie is \u201cmaking substantial progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump said he told Lurie that he was \u201cmaking a mistake, because we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove,\u201d but that he had ultimately agreed to pause the surge \u2014 in part because Lurie has the support of prominent business leaders Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Marc Benioff of Salesforce.<\/p>\n

During a Thursday morning briefing less than an hour after Trump\u2019s post, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and other East Bay leaders said they had \u201cno information\u201d about such a stand-down in their communities, and were still bracing for increased federal immigration raids given the staging of forces at nearby Coast Guard Island, which is in the waters between Alameda and Oakland.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d Lee said. \u201cBut … we are fully prepared. We\u2019re monitoring developments closely and we\u2019ll keep our residents informed if there are any confirmed changes. Oakland is and will continue to be a welcoming city for our immigrants and our refugees.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of Homeland Security defended the deployment of its agents to the region, saying they would be \u201ctargeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens \u2014 including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alameda County Dist. Atty. Ursula Jones Dickson said the staging of immigration forces in the East Bay was part of an established Trump administration \u201cplaybook\u201d to rile up communities with immigration actions and then use any unrest to justify further force \u2014 and called on East Bay residents not to fall for it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that they\u2019re baiting Oakland, and that\u2019s why San Francisco, all of a sudden, is off the table,\u201d Jones Dickson said. \u201cSo I\u2019m not going to be quiet about what we know is coming. We know that their expectation is that Oakland is going to do something to cause them to make us the example.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lourdes Martinez, co-director of the immigrant rights program at Centro Legal de la Raza, said communities are understandably scared given recent legal rulings that federal immigration agents can stop people based on factors such as the color of their skin, the language they are speaking and the job sectors they work in \u2014 and organizers expect more such stops given the latest deployments.<\/p>\n

She called on immigrants and others to protect themselves by readying documentation and making sure that they and their families are familiar with their rights to remain silent and to have an attorney \u2014 and how to contact legal advocacy groups in case of trouble. She also urged community members to report any detentions, to \u201cmake sure that nobody disappears.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know this is an uncertain and stressful time. However, this is a moment of unity and power, not panic,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Lee\u2019s event, about 40 protesters gathered near a bridge leading to Coast Guard Island.<\/p>\n

Music was blasting. One person wore a blow-up animal costume, a trend that gained momentum amid similar protests in Portland recently. Coast Guard members in tactical gear stood in a line across from protesters who screamed at them. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew there was going to be [an immigration enforcement] presence here and we wanted to disrupt in a peaceful way \u2014 to make it harder for them to abduct people,\u201d said Lindsey Swanson, 32, a financial planner who lives in Oakland.<\/p>\n

Swanson and others said they believed immigration enforcement would also ramp up in San Francisco, despite Trump and Lurie\u2019s morning assurances, and would continue in the East Bay regardless.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s East Bay \u2014 Oakland, Berkeley \u2014 so calling off San Francisco means nothing,\u201d said Rachel Kim, a 28-year-old Berkeley resident who is training to become a therapist.<\/p>\n

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump\u2019s conversation with Lurie was an example of how he is willing to work with Democrats and other states to \u201cdo the right thing and clean up America\u2019s cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is genuinely interested in this effort to make our streets safer, to make our cities safe and clean again,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The morning events followed days of growing tensions in the Bay Area over Trump\u2019s plans for the region, after he repeatedly suggested that he would send federal forces into San Francisco \u2014 which he called a \u201cmess\u201d in desperate need of help, despite data showing decreasing crime and homeless encampments and surging positive sentiment.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom confirmed the staging of immigration agents in the area, and suggested it was the first move in a broader effort by Trump and his administration to stoke chaos and intimidate residents<\/a> in yet another liberal part of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe sends out masked men, he sends out Border Patrol, he sends out ICE, he creates anxiety and fear in the community so that he can lay claim to solving that by sending in the Guard,\u201d Newsom said. \u201cThis is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

The response echoed those of leaders and activists in other cities where immigration forces and federal troops have been deployed, including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Portland. It added to an already rancorous debate around Trump\u2019s mass deportation initiative, which he campaigned on heavily, and the role of federal forces in American cities \u2014 something the founders of the nation limited to extreme circumstances. <\/p>\n

Central to that debate has been Trump\u2019s repeated and unprecedented decision to repeatedly send troops into American cities without the explicit support of state or local leaders. Federal judges have been divided on that issue, though it has so far been allowed to continue in Los Angeles by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n

But even in the appellate court, there has been tense disagreement.<\/p>\n

Liberal judges on the court recently called for the decision allowing the deployments to continue in Los Angeles, which was made by a three-judge panel, to be reheard before a larger, 11-judge panel. When that request was denied, several dissented Wednesday<\/a> \u2014 excoriating the deployments as a clear breach of constitutional law and the separation of powers.<\/p>\n

Judge Marsha Berzon, in a dissent joined by 10 fellow 9th Circuit judges, wrote that the smaller panel in its preliminary deference to Trump had \u201cinvited presidents, now and in the future, to deploy military troops in response to the kinds of commonplace, shortlived, domestic disturbances whose containment conventionally falls to local and federal law enforcement units.\u201d<\/p>\n

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos, in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND\u00a0\u2014\u00a0President Trump said Thursday that he had called off a planned federal \u201csurge\u201d into San Francisco after speaking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2672,1409,179,16633,16423,16634,63,16444,16637,143,2058,101,103,102,104,106,105,16636,16635,1519],"class_list":["post-20191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-administration","tag-city","tag-community","tag-east-bay-brace","tag-federal-deployment","tag-federal-immigration-force","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-lurie","tag-militarized-immigration-enforcement","tag-oakland","tag-protest","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-staging","tag-surge","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}