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The Trump administration seemed ready on Wednesday to deploy dozens of law enforcement personnel to the Bay Area region for a major border security initiative, prompting condemnation from California leaders.

Details of the Deployment

Information of the operation were gradually becoming clear, but it will reportedly include more than 100 law enforcement personnel, according to reports. The personnel are expected to begin utilizing the Coast Guard facility in the East Bay, across the bay from San Francisco. It was not confirmed whether state soldiers would participate.

Government Backlash

The mission is the result of an extended period of threats by the administration to target the progressive municipality. Governor Gavin Newsom condemned the move, labeling it “straight from the authoritarian playbook”.

“He sends out unidentified officers, he deploys Border Patrol, he sends out immigration officials, he generates worry and terror in the neighborhood so that he can lay claim for addressing that by sending in the national guard,” he declared. “This mirrors the incendiary putting out the fire.”

Local Readiness

San Francisco is the newest metropolitan center targeted by the administration's initiative of mass immigration arrests. The operation is likely to cause a showdown between the federal government and municipal authorities who have committed to block militarized immigration enforcement in the city.

San Franciscans have been gearing up for months for Trump to fulfill ongoing warnings to dispatch personnel to the city. At a Wednesday media briefing, San Francisco’s mayor emphasized that the city was ready.

“During this period, we have been expecting the likelihood of some kind of national intervention in our city,” said the mayor, noting that he had implemented additional measures on Wednesday to “bolster the city’s assistance to our foreign-born residents, and guarantee our offices are coordinated before any federal deployment.”

Judicial Background

Despite legal challenges to deployments in a multiple urban areas, including Chicago, Oregon and LA, Trump has asserted “complete control” to dispatch the state troops in cities, pointing to the federal statute which allows presidents specific authority to dispatch personnel on American territory.

Public Reaction

Newsom – who previously served as San Francisco’s chief executive – had pledged to take action “immediately” to a operation in the city. “The notion that the national administration can send forces into our cities with no valid reason grounded in reality, no supervision, no accountability, no consideration of state sovereignty – it represents an infringement on the rule of law,” he said on Wednesday.

Local organizations, including social justice nonprofits created during the first Trump administration, have organized to quickly mobilize a mass rally in the city, as well as vigils at local libraries.

Community Consequences

In San Francisco’s Mission area, a mostly Latin American neighborhood, local representative stated to media last week she and her voters had been preparing for this moment. “The moment that people stop going to work, when people of color cannot move about freely without the fear of government officers discriminating against and apprehending them, the moment when families keep children home, are too scared to go to the food market or doctor,” she said. “The readiness efforts in the Mission is essentially a shutdown the likes of which we haven’t seen since the pandemic.”

State Troops Condition

Roughly 300 out of 4,000 California state soldiers continue under national command under an command from Trump. Roughly several hundred of them had been transferred to the Pacific Northwest, where they were waiting in limbo amid a legal battle over their deployment.

This period, Newsom said he had called the state military personnel under his authority to manage charity kitchens during the government shutdown.