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The federal government was preparing on Wednesday to send scores of federal agents to the San Francisco Bay Area for a large-scale immigration enforcement operation, sparking outrage from California leaders.

Details of the Deployment

Details of the mission were still emerging, but it will allegedly feature approximately 100+ government officers, as reported. The personnel are expected to begin using the military installation in Alameda, opposite San Francisco. It remained unclear whether state soldiers would join the operation.

Political Response

The deployment is the result of months of warnings by the president to focus on the Democratic-run city. California’s governor Gavin Newsom denounced the action, labeling it “taken directly from the dictator’s handbook”.

“He sends out covered agents, he deploys Border Patrol, he deploys ICE, he creates anxiety and fear in the population so that he can claim credit for handling that by dispatching the military forces,” Newsom said. “This is no different than the firestarter fighting the blaze.”

Municipal Readiness

San Francisco is the latest large urban area singled out by Donald Trump’s campaign of widespread apprehensions. The operation is expected to trigger a confrontation between the federal government and municipal authorities who have vowed to prevent armed border control in the city.

San Franciscans have been gearing up for months for Trump to make good on repeated threats to deploy forces to the city. At a Wednesday public announcement, San Francisco’s municipal chief reiterated that the city was equipped.

“Over recent weeks, we have been expecting the possibility of some kind of federal deployment in our city,” declared the leader, noting that he had taken further executive actions on Wednesday to “strengthen the city’s protection of our foreign-born residents, and make certain our departments are prepared ahead of any national intervention.”

Legal Context

Despite court battles to deployments in a number of cities, including the Windy City, Portland and Southern California, Trump has claimed “unquestioned power” to send the military forces in cities, referencing the federal statute which allows presidents limited power to dispatch personnel on American territory.

Public Reaction

The governor, who previously served as San Francisco’s chief executive – had pledged to intervene “right away” to a deployment in the city. “The concept that the White House can deploy troops into our cities with no legitimate cause grounded in reality, no supervision, no responsibility, no respect for local authority – it represents an infringement on the rule of law,” he said on Wednesday.

Public associations, including civil rights groups created during the previous presidential term, have prepared to rapidly assemble a large protest in the city, as well as vigils at community centers.

Neighborhood Effect

In San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, a largely Hispanic population, elected official informed journalists last week she and her constituents had been preparing for this moment. “The moment that people stop going to work, when minority individuals are afraid to go outdoors without the fear of national personnel discriminating against and arresting them, the moment when students avoid classrooms, grow too frightened to go to the grocery store or physician,” she said. “Our ongoing preparations in the Mission is essentially a shutdown the scale of which we haven’t seen since the health crisis.”

State Troops Situation

Roughly three hundred out of four thousand regional military personnel stay under federal control under an directive from Trump. About two hundred of them had been transferred to Oregon, where they were waiting in limbo amid a legal battle over their assignment.

This week, Newsom said he had called the local soldiers under his command to operate food banks during the government shutdown.