Trump Pauses San Francisco Federal Deployment After Protests

President Trump said he is calling off a planned “surge” of federal agents into San Francisco after a phone call with Mayor Daniel Lurie and conversations with Bay Area figures including tech CEOs Jensen Huang and Marc Benioff, who urged him to hold off and said the city was making progress. The reversal came after federal agents had already begun assembling at a Bay Area Coast Guard base and were met by protesters, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem later reaffirmed that the deployment was being called off. Mayor Lurie welcomed the decision, saying San Francisco is “on the rise,” and said he would continue partnering with federal law enforcement on drugs and violent crime while warning that military-style or immigration-enforcement deployments would hinder recovery. Trump framed the pause as giving Lurie a chance to act but said he believed federal action could be “faster, stronger, and safer,” and left open the possibility of future deployments. The episode highlights tensions between the White House’s hard line on crime and local officials’ preference for municipal-led policing and targeted federal cooperation rather than a militarized presence.