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The Trump administration seemed ready on Wednesday to deploy dozens of federal agents to the San Francisco Bay Area for a major border security initiative, prompting outrage from California leaders.

Details of the Deployment

Details of the operation were still emerging, but it will allegedly feature more than 100 federal agents, according to reports. The personnel are reportedly set to begin occupying the military installation in across the bay, across the bay from San Francisco. It was still uncertain whether military personnel would also be involved.

Official Response

The operation comes after months of threats by the administration to target the liberal city. California’s governor Gavin Newsom condemned the move, describing it as “taken directly from the authoritarian playbook”.

“He dispatches unidentified officers, he deploys Border Patrol, he deploys federal agents, he creates worry and terror in the neighborhood so that he can claim credit for addressing that by dispatching the national guard,” he declared. “This mirrors the arsonist putting out the inferno.”

City Preparation

San Francisco is the newest metropolitan center focused on by the federal effort of mass immigration arrests. The mission is anticipated to provoke a confrontation between the administration and city officials who have vowed to block armed border control in the city.

San Franciscans have been gearing up for months for Trump to carry out ongoing warnings to deploy forces to the city. At a Wednesday afternoon press conference, San Francisco’s mayor reiterated that the city was ready.

“For months, we have been preparing for the likelihood of a potential national intervention in our city,” stated the official, noting that he had taken further executive actions on Wednesday to “bolster the city’s assistance to our immigrant communities, and guarantee our departments are organized prior to any national intervention.”

Constitutional Background

Regardless of legal challenges to operations in a multiple urban areas, including the Windy City, the Pacific Northwest and Southern California, Trump has asserted “unquestioned power” to dispatch the national guard in cities, pointing to the federal statute which allows presidents specific authority to dispatch personnel on US soil.

Public Preparation

The governor, who was formerly as San Francisco’s mayor – had pledged to intervene “immediately” to a deployment in the city. “The idea that the federal government can dispatch personnel into our cities with no legitimate cause based on facts, no monitoring, no responsibility, disregard for regional control – it’s a direct assault on the rule of law,” he said on Wednesday.

Local organizations, including social justice nonprofits formed in the previous presidential term, have organized to quickly mobilize a large protest in the city, as well as peaceful assemblies at local libraries.

Neighborhood Consequences

In San Francisco’s Mission district, a mostly Latin American neighborhood, city supervisor stated to media last week she and her constituents had been preparing for this moment. “The time that workers cease employment, when minority individuals are afraid to go outdoors without the concern of national personnel racially profiling and apprehending them, the time when parents stop sending kids to school, are too scared to go to the grocery store or doctor,” she said. “Our ongoing preparations in the Mission is essentially a shutdown the likes of which we have not experienced since Covid.”

State Troops Situation

Approximately 300 out of 4,000 California national guard troops stay under federal control under an order from Trump. Approximately several hundred of them had been dispatched to the Pacific Northwest, where they were staying in standby during a legal battle over their deployment.

This time, Newsom said he had called the local soldiers under his control to operate charity kitchens throughout the government shutdown.