Resistance Organizing Continues in the Bay Area Even After Trump Pauses Planned Federal Surge Into San Francisco

For months, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the National Guard have carried out sweeping deployments in cities across the United States, and now federal agents had been gearing up to move into San Francisco.

Local resistance organizations have already been coordinating closely with activists in other major cities already overwhelmed by federal law enforcement actions. Thousands of volunteers, connected through Signal group chats, Zoom calls, and social media outreach, have organized protests and spread warnings that federal troops are bound for San Francisco—even though the full deployment has not yet launched.

On Thursday morning, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie shared posts on Instagram and X announcing he had spoken with President Donald Trump and convinced the president to scrap the planned deployment of federal agents scheduled for this past Saturday. Trump confirmed the reversal shortly after on his social platform Truth Social, writing: “Great people like Jensen Huang and Marc Benioff, among others, have called me to say San Francisco has a great future ahead. They want to give it a ‘shot.’ That’s why we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!”

Activists and long-time San Francisco residents remain largely unconvinced by the announcement, so organizing efforts continue moving forward full speed.

Early this week, roughly 100 federal law enforcement agents gathered at Coast Guard Island, a small federal base in Alameda, located just across the San Francisco Bay from San Francisco. Federal officials have confirmed the site is being used as a staging ground for upcoming immigration raids. The island only has one public road leading in and out, and once word of the agent deployment leaked, protesters quickly boxed the group in. Around 200 demonstrators showed up Thursday morning to block the agents’ movement, resulting in clashes between protesters and law enforcement.

Wednesday night, grassroots group Bay Resistance hosted an educational mobilization webinar that drew an overwhelming crowd. Due to capacity limits on the group’s Zoom subscription, organizers were forced to cap attendance at 5,000 participants, and hundreds more viewed a recording of the call after it concluded.

“The Bay Area isn’t going to sit quietly back,” Bay Resistance organizer Emily Lee told attendees on the mobilization call. “We are definitely going to stand together to push back against this administration.”

Throughout the call, organizers shared updates in English with simultaneous Spanish translation, laying out plans for upcoming actions across the Bay Area. They discussed lessons learned from direct conversations with Los Angeles organizers, who mobilized against ICE raids and federal troop deployments in their city, and emphasized the value of adopting the tactic used by Portland protesters. Portland organizers leaned into humor and whimsical props like inflatable animals to counter ICE actions and push back against Trump’s claim that the city was a “war-ravaged” hellhole.

“We’re going to prepare ourselves, but we’re also going to be joyful,” Lee said. “San Francisco, the Bay Area—we know how to come together here. We need to show everyone we’re not going to stop living our lives.”

The morning after the Zoom webinar, Trump officially called off plans to send agents into San Francisco. But a pre-planned resistance rally at San Francisco City Hall went ahead anyway. The event was organized by a broad coalition of groups including Bay Resistance, local labor unions, and grassroots activist organizations. Speakers ranging from local cultural leaders to San Francisco district supervisors took the podium to make clear they had no intention of pausing their planned work.

In the crowd of roughly 150 attendees, supporters held signs with slogans like “ICE Out of CA” and “We Hella Love Justice.” One woman, a lifelong San Francisco resident and former circus performer, twirled on the sidewalk wearing a Vladimir Putin mask, with a small scowling Trump puppet dangling below it.

The crowd was visibly energized. “We have the infrastructure to really get massive numbers of people out into the streets,” said Claire Donovan, Bay Resistance’s communications manager. “We’re not scared to use that.”

Rally speakers also quickly pushed back on Trump’s earlier claim that he has “unquestioned power” to deploy troops to San Francisco, as well as his comment that “the difference is I think they want us in San Francisco.” Trump’s remark appeared to reference recent statements from two high-profile tech billionaires: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff called for the National Guard to deploy to San Francisco ahead of his company’s Dreamforce conference last week, then walked back the statement after a wave of public controversy. Former head of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk has also publicly advocated for sending the National Guard into the city.

Regardless of where these tech leaders stand, San Francisco officials who spoke from the steps of City Hall on Thursday made their opposition to any federal troop deployment in the city crystal clear. As San Francisco District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder put it in her speech, the entire push for a deployment only exists because Marc Benioff, a powerful Trump-aligned billionaire, called for the National Guard to be sent in. Fielder condemned Benioff and other billionaires who have demanded troops to police the city.

“This city does not belong to them,” Fielder said. “It belongs to us. We are not backing down. We are not flying under anyone's radar.”

“Thank you for calling Marc Benioff out on his shit!” someone in the crowd shouted after Fielder finished speaking.

But even without the planned “surge” into San Francisco, activists in the heart of Big Tech’s home region remain fired up and mobilized. “Ultimately we see this as a win for people power—our organizing helped push them to step back this time,” Donovan said. “But it's not over. There's still so much at stake across the Bay Area, so we want to be ready and stand in solidarity with all our communities.”

The federal presence at Coast Guard Island is still ongoing, and protesters continue to stage regular demonstrations nearby. While San Francisco may be out of the immediate crosshairs for now, Oakland, San Jose, and other Bay Area cities remain on high alert. Rallies and organizing will continue even if larger numbers of federal troops never arrive.

As Donovan puts it, all these resistance efforts are in service of rewriting the dominant narrative about the region. “We need to reframe the story so that it shows communities are the ones under attack,” Donovan said. “This isn't about our cities being riddled with crime.”