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The Trump administration appeared poised on Wednesday to send scores of federal agents to the San Francisco Bay Area for a significant crackdown on immigration, prompting outrage from local politicians.

Information of the Deployment

Information of the operation were continuing to unfold, but it will reportedly include approximately 100+ law enforcement personnel, based on information. The personnel are expected to begin utilizing the Coast Guard facility in Alameda, opposite San Francisco. It remained unclear whether military personnel would participate.

Political Reaction

The mission is the result of months of threats by the president to target the Democratic-run city. California’s governor Gavin Newsom condemned the action, calling it “straight from the autocrat's manual”.

“He dispatches unidentified officers, he deploys customs officers, he sends out federal agents, he instills concern and apprehension in the neighborhood so that he can lay claim for handling that by deploying the state troops,” Newsom said. “This is exactly like the firestarter putting out the inferno.”

Municipal Readiness

San Francisco is the latest large urban area focused on by the federal effort of widespread apprehensions. The operation is likely to cause a standoff between the White House and local leaders who have pledged to prevent armed border control in the city.

San Franciscans have been readying for weeks for Trump to fulfill ongoing warnings to deploy forces to the city. At a Wednesday afternoon press conference, San Francisco’s municipal chief emphasized that the city was ready.

“Over recent weeks, we have been anticipating the chance of some kind of national intervention in our city,” said the mayor, adding that he had taken further executive actions on Wednesday to “strengthen the city’s support for our foreign-born residents, and ensure our offices are coordinated ahead of any national intervention.”

Legal Context

Despite legal challenges to operations in a number of cities, including Illinois, the Pacific Northwest and Southern California, Trump has claimed “absolute authority” to send the national guard in cities, pointing to the federal statute which enables presidents specific authority to send forces on domestic land.

Community Response

Newsom – who previously served as San Francisco’s chief executive – had vowed to take action “immediately” to a operation in the city. “The notion that the federal government can deploy troops into our cities with no justification supported by evidence, no supervision, no answerability, disregard for regional control – it constitutes an attack on the legal system,” he said on Wednesday.

Community groups, including civil rights groups created during the first Trump administration, have prepared to rapidly assemble a large protest in the city, as well as candlelight gatherings at local libraries.

Community Effect

In San Francisco’s Mission area, a predominantly Latino population, local representative told reporters last week she and her residents had been anticipating this situation. “The moment that people stop going to work, when people of color are afraid to go outdoors without the apprehension of national personnel targeting based on race and apprehending them, the point when students avoid classrooms, grow too frightened to go to the food market or doctor,” she said. “Our ongoing preparations in the Mission is basically a halt the scale of which we have not witnessed since the pandemic.”

National Guard Condition

About 300 out of several thousand state military personnel remain federalized under an directive from Trump. Roughly two hundred of them had been transferred to the neighboring state, where they were remaining in uncertainty during a legal battle over their assignment.

This time, Newsom said he had called the California national guard troops under his command to manage charity kitchens throughout the federal closure.