Newsom to Trump on sending troops to San Francisco: ‘We will sue you’
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Wednesday night that he will sue the Trump administration for sending immigration agents to San Francisco.
"Send troops to San Francisco and we will sue you, @realDonaldTrump," Newsom wrote in a post on X, which included a video of the governor at a press conference.
"We're going to be fierce, we're going to be focused in terms of our response," Newsom said before he raised a stack of papers. "Quite literally, this is the lawsuit that I will file within a nanosecond of any effort to send the military to one of America's great cities, San Francisco."
Newsom praised the city's drop in homicide and economic success, and that "only Donald Trump can wreck that."
"And we will push back with clarity and conviction," the governor said. "We'll continue to win in court."
The administration dispatched 100 agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and from Coast Guard Base Alameda, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. They are expected to arrive on Thursday.
Trump announced over the weekend that he would send federal officials to San Francisco "and we'll make it great," he told Fox News.
“We’re going to go to San Francisco," Trump added. "The difference is they want us in San Francisco.”
Newsom and San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie (D) spoke out against any deployment of federal agents in the city.
“California has seen enough. President Trump and Stephen Miller’s authoritarian playbook is coming for another of our cities, and violence and vandalism are exactly what they’re looking for to invoke chaos,” Newsom posted on X.
Lurie told The Associated Press last week that the city is safe.
“We got this in San Francisco," he added.
But on Monday, Lurie said San Francisco will welcome more federal help to arrest drug dealers and disrupt drug markets. Other than that, sending in the National Guard was out of the question.
“The National Guard does not have the authority to arrest drug dealers — and sending them to San Francisco will do nothing to get fentanyl off the streets or make our city safer,” Lurie told the AP in a statement.
In June, Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles after Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids south of the city led to local protests.
The president has since deployed soldiers to Illinois, Portland, Ore., Memphis, Tenn., and Washington, D.C. within the first nine months of his second term.