Newsom asks California to 'remain peaceful' amid report of San Francisco deployment

Rosalio Ahumada, The Sacramento Bee on Oct 22, 2025

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The Trump administration is deploying more than 100 federal law-enforcement agents, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, to a U.S. Coast Guard base in the Bay Area in preparation for an enforcement operation.

The San Francisco Chronicle first reported the deployment, noting that federal agents were expected to arrive Thursday at Coast Guard Base Alameda.

About an hour after the Chronicle’s story was published online Wednesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom urged residents to remain peaceful as the Trump administration launched another enforcement operation in California. The first such operation took place earlier this year in Los Angeles, when President Donald Trump ordered National Guard troops to protect federal buildings from widespread protest over his immigration policies.

“California has seen enough,” Newsom said Wednesday in an X social media post. “President Trump and Stephen Miller’s authoritarian playbook is coming for another of our cities, and violence and vandalism are exactly what they’re looking for to invoke chaos. Help keep yourself and your communities safe. Remain peaceful.”

Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to confirm or deny reports of federal agents deployed to the Bay Area, and directed The Bee’s inquiries to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. CBP officials did not immediately respond to questions.

Earlier this week, California leaders warned Trump they would immediately sue to block his administration from sending the military to San Francisco. Their warning came after Trump claimed “unquestioned power” to send in the National Guard after announcing a campaign last month to punish liberal cities with military might.

The planned enforcement action in San Francisco did not appear to include National Guard personnel or other military resources. Still, it raised concern for Newsom given the earlier deployment in Los Angeles.

Newsom, who served as San Francisco’s mayor from 2004 to 2011, said he would challenge any federal incursion into the city and pointed to declining statewide crime rates — the homicide rate, for example, is expected to be the lowest in the city since 1954, according to the Chronicle.

Trump has, for weeks, suggested he would send troops to San Francisco, citing his ability to invoke the Insurrection Act.

“We’re going to go to San Francisco,” Trump told Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo in an interview that broadcast Sunday. “The difference is, I think they want us in San Francisco. San Francisco was truly one of the great cities of the world, and then 15 years ago, it went wrong. It went woke.”

The Trump administration has already sent in troops to Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago, Illinois, to suppress anti-deportation protests in those cities.

“President Trump has long abandoned any pretenses for the illegal federalization and deployment of California’s National Guard. He does not care about satisfying the conditions of the law; he cares about himself, and he cares about power,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said. “Trump has made no secret of his intentions: To use our National Guard as his own Royal Army and our cities as a training ground for the military.”

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(The Bee Capitol Bureau’s Lia Russell contributed to this story.)

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