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The White House was preparing on Wednesday to send scores of federal agents to the Bay Area region for a large-scale crackdown on immigration, triggering criticism from California leaders.

Details of the Operation

Specifics of the operation were still emerging, but it will reportedly include more than 100 law enforcement personnel, as reported. The personnel are expected to begin using the military installation in Alameda, facing San Francisco. It was not confirmed whether state soldiers would join the operation.

Government Reaction

The operation is the result of months of warnings by the administration to target the liberal city. California’s governor Gavin Newsom criticized the action, calling it “right out of the autocrat's manual”.

“He deploys masked men, he deploys customs officers, he dispatches immigration officials, he generates concern and apprehension in the population so that he can take credit for addressing that by dispatching the state troops,” the governor stated. “This mirrors the arsonist putting out the fire.”

City Preparation

San Francisco is the newest large urban area focused on by the federal effort of mass immigration arrests. The mission is expected to trigger a standoff between the White House and municipal authorities who have pledged to prevent militarized immigration enforcement in the city.

San Franciscans have been readying for weeks for Trump to carry out ongoing warnings to dispatch personnel to the city. At a Wednesday media briefing, San Francisco’s municipal chief emphasized that the city was prepared.

“During this period, we have been expecting the likelihood of some kind of national intervention in our city,” declared the leader, explaining that he had enacted new policies on Wednesday to “bolster the city’s protection of our foreign-born residents, and guarantee our departments are organized before any government operation.”

Legal Framework

Despite legal challenges to operations in a number of cities, including Illinois, the Pacific Northwest and LA, Trump has asserted “absolute authority” to dispatch the military forces in cities, citing the presidential authority which enables presidents certain rights to deploy troops on American territory.

Community Preparation

Newsom – who once held office as San Francisco’s mayor – had vowed to take action “immediately” to a operation in the city. “The concept that the national administration can send forces into our cities with no legitimate cause supported by evidence, no supervision, no accountability, disregard for local authority – it’s a direct assault on the legal system,” he said on Wednesday.

Public associations, including social justice nonprofits formed in the first Trump administration, have prepared to rapidly assemble a large protest in the city, as well as vigils at community centers.

Community Impact

In San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, a predominantly Latino community, local representative told reporters last week she and her constituents had been anticipating this situation. “The moment that people stop going to work, when anyone Black or brown can’t freely walk outside without the apprehension of Trump’s federal agents targeting based on race and detaining them, the moment when students avoid classrooms, become too afraid to go to the food market or physician,” she said. “Our ongoing preparations in the Mission is fundamentally a shutdown the scale of which we haven’t seen since the health crisis.”

Military Condition

Approximately three hundred out of several thousand regional national guard troops continue under national command under an directive from Trump. Roughly several hundred of them had been sent to the Pacific Northwest, where they were waiting in limbo during a legal battle over their mission.

This time, Newsom said he had summoned the state military personnel under his authority to manage food banks amid the federal closure.