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The White House was preparing on Wednesday to send dozens of government officers to the northern California for a significant border security initiative, triggering condemnation from California leaders.

Information of the Operation

Details of the operation were still emerging, but it will allegedly feature more than 100 government officers, as reported. The officers are expected to begin using the US Coast Guard base in across the bay, facing San Francisco. It was not confirmed whether national guard troops would participate.

Political Backlash

The deployment follows weeks of warnings by the president to target the progressive municipality. Governor Gavin Newsom criticized the move, describing it as “taken directly from the authoritarian playbook”.

“He deploys masked men, he deploys Border Patrol, he dispatches ICE, he creates concern and apprehension in the population so that he can take credit for solving that by sending in the military forces,” the governor stated. “This mirrors the firestarter fighting the fire.”

City Planning

San Francisco is the most recent metropolitan center focused on by the federal effort of widespread apprehensions. The operation is anticipated to provoke a standoff between the federal government and city officials who have pledged to stop armed border control in the city.

San Franciscans have been gearing up for weeks for Trump to carry out ongoing warnings to send troops to the city. At a Wednesday media briefing, San Francisco’s municipal chief reiterated that the city was ready.

“During this period, we have been expecting the possibility of a potential federal deployment in our city,” stated the official, noting that he had taken further executive actions on Wednesday to “bolster the city’s protection of our immigrant communities, and make certain our agencies are coordinated prior to any government operation.”

Judicial Context

Regardless of legal challenges to deployments in a number of cities, including Illinois, Portland and LA, Trump has asserted “complete control” to dispatch the military forces in cities, referencing the presidential authority which permits presidents specific authority to deploy troops on US soil.

Local Reaction

Newsom, who once held office as San Francisco’s chief executive – had committed to step in “immediately” to a deployment in the city. “The concept that the national administration can deploy troops into our cities with no valid reason based on facts, no oversight, no accountability, no consideration of regional control – it represents an infringement on the rule of law,” he said on Wednesday.

Public associations, including social justice nonprofits created during the first Trump administration, have organized to rapidly assemble a mass rally in the city, as well as candlelight gatherings at public spaces.

Local Consequences

In San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, a mostly Latin American population, city supervisor told reporters last week she and her voters had been bracing for this time. “The point that people stop going to work, when people of color cannot move about freely without the fear of government officers racially profiling and apprehending them, the point when families keep children home, become too afraid to go to the food market or doctor,” she said. “What we have been preparing for in the Mission is essentially a closure the scale of which we haven’t seen since the pandemic.”

State Troops Situation

Approximately three hundred out of several thousand California military personnel remain federalized under an order from Trump. About two hundred of them had been dispatched to the neighboring state, where they were staying in standby during a legal battle over their deployment.

This period, Newsom said he had requested the California national guard troops under his command to staff charity kitchens amid the government shutdown.