President Trump announced on Thursday that he has called off the deployment of federal immigration agents to San Francisco, just as they were beginning to gather at a Coast Guard base in the Bay Area.
Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he had stopped the federal action in San Francisco at the request of friends who live in the Bay Area and who vouched for the work of the city’s Democratic mayor, Daniel Lurie.
Mr. Trump specifically cited Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, who set off a local firestorm for initially saying he wanted the National Guard in San Francisco, and Jensen Huang, the president and chief executive of Nvidia. Mr. Benioff later apologized and said he did not want Guard troops in the city.
Mr. Trump said that federal officials were “preparing to ‘surge’ San Francisco, California, on Saturday,” until his friends asked him to stop because Mr. Lurie was making “substantial progress.”
Mr. Lurie said in a statement that Mr. Trump had told him of the reversal in a phone call late Wednesday night. He said the two men spoke about San Francisco’s recent drop in crime, the return of tourists after the pandemic and the city’s booming artificial intelligence industry.
“In that conversation, the president told me clearly that he was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco,” Mr. Lurie said in the statement. “Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reaffirmed that direction in our conversation this morning.”
It was not immediately clear whether that meant the Trump administration had called off the entire planned U.S. Customs and Border Protection operation for all of the Bay Area, or just for San Francisco.
Protesters gathered Thursday morning outside Coast Guard Island, a facility in Alameda, Calif., across the bay from San Francisco, that was to be used as abase for the operation. Members of the crowd tried to block cars from entering the base, including at least two Border Patrol vehicles.
With one of the highest costs of living in the nation, San Francisco has a relatively low estimated population of undocumented residents, compared with other major cities in California.
A 2023 analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimated that about 42,000 of the city’s population of more than 800,000 people were living without authorization in the country. Los Angeles County, by comparison, is believed to be home to more than one million undocumented immigrants.
In neighboring Alameda County, which includes the city of Oakland, estimates put the undocumented population at about 100,000.
Mayor Barbara Lee of Oakland, whose skyline can be seen from the Coast Guard base, said she had not heard from Mr. Trump and did not expect her city to be spared from immigration raids.
“We have no idea. This is very fluid,” Ms. Lee said. “We are moving forward with our plans, and we are prepared.”
Ursula Jones Dickson, the district attorney in Alameda County, said that she expected Oakland to still be targeted by federal agents.
“We know they’re baiting Oakland, and that’s why San Francisco all of a sudden is off the table,” Ms. Jones Dickson said. “I’m not going to be quiet about what’s coming.”
The tech leaders who pleaded with Mr. Trump were less vocal after the announcement on Thursday.
Mr. Benioff, when asked for comments for this article, shared screenshots of the president’s Truth Social post, but did not answer questions about their conversation.
Representatives with Nvidia, the artificial intelligence chipmaker, declined to comment. Mr. Huang, the company’s chief executive, owns a mansion on Billionaire’s Row, the San Francisco neighborhood where Mr. Lurie’s mother, Mimi Haas, also lives.
David Sacks, another resident of the neighborhood and Mr. Trump’s czar for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, had previously posted on X that the National Guard should come to the city. By late Thursday morning, he had not commented publicly, and he did not respond to a request for comment.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office said Mr. Trump “finally, for once, listened to reason” in deciding to call off the San Francisco immigration enforcement actions.
And Representative Nancy Pelosi, who represents most of San Francisco, praised Mr. Lurie for his “exceptional leadership” in a statement. The two have known each other for decades through the city’s elite social and political circles.
“I salute Mayor Lurie for standing up for our city and reinforcing San Francisco’s strength, optimism and recovery,” she said.
In San Francisco, the Mission District, the center of the city’s Latino culture, was quiet on Thursday morning. The streets were far emptier than usual. Normally packed buses were nearly empty. Fewer children showed up to schools.
“There’s a great deal of anxiety, stress and confusion,” said Cassondra Curiel, the president of the local teachers union. She said families were keeping children home out of fear.
After word spread that federal agents weren’t coming to San Francisco, Ms. Curiel called it “a small relief.” She said she hoped that Mr. Lurie had asked the president to end the federal operation across the entire Bay Area, not just in San Francisco.
The mayor, a political neophyte and an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, has staunchly avoided talking about national politics since he was inaugurated in January, saying that he wanted instead to focus on local matters. He has not been heard even to say the name Trump in public.
“San Francisco is on the rise,” Mr. Lurie said on Thursday. “We appreciate that the president understands that we are the global hub for technology, and when San Francisco is strong, our country is strong.”
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting from Washington, and Felicia Mello contributed from Alameda, Calif.
Heather Knight is a reporter in San Francisco, leading The Times’s coverage of the Bay Area and Northern California.
Soumya Karlamangla is a Times reporter who covers California. She is based in the Bay Area.
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