The president said Mayor Daniel Lurie “asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around.”
President Donald Trump won’t deploy federal troops to San Francisco after all, he and city Mayor Daniel Lurie announced Thursday.
Trump shared the news on Truth Social, saying he and Lurie spoke on the phone Wednesday night after news broke that the president had dispatched more than 100 federal agents to a nearby Coast Guard base, putting the city on alert for aggressive crime crackdowns and immigration raids.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie delivers his inaugural address outside City Hall in January.
“I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around,” Trump continued. “I told him I think he is making a mistake, because we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove.”
Lurie also posted about the conversation, saying Trump called him and told him “clearly” that he was canceling plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco. He added that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reaffirmed that to him Thursday morning.
Lurie’s statement didn’t take any swipes at Trump but made it clear he opposed any military presence in the city.
“We have work to do, and we would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Attorney to get drugs and drug dealers off our streets, but having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery,” he wrote.
He spoke more critically of Trump’s plans in a press conference Wednesday ahead of their call.
“This doesn’t make our city safer, it terrorizes our communities,” Lurie said of federal deployment in the city. “We don’t exactly know what the federal government is planning in San Francisco and across the Bay Area, but we do know this federal administration has a playbook in cities across the country.”
Trump in recent months has targeted cities led by Democrats, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, by deploying, or attempting to deploy, National Guard troops and other federal agents.
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