- By Adam Shanks | Examiner staff writer
- Jul 30, 2025 Updated Jul 30, 2025 (SFExamner.com)
Mayor Daniel Lurie and the San Francisco Police Department are attempting to strike a delicate balance as they face pressure to clarify The City’s role in clashes between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and protestors.
In response to questions raised by Supervisor Jackie Fielder, Lurie and SFPD acting Chief Paul Yep explained in a letter Monday that The City would not aid ICE in its immigration-enforcement operations.
However, Yep also described the San Francisco Police Department as being caught between the local sanctuary ordinance — which prohibits local law enforcement from aiding ICE — and federal law that prevents local police from obstructing federal agents.
“In general, arrival at the scene of an active immigration enforcement action presents tactical challenges given SFPD’s duties to avoid either assisting or obstructing federal agents engaged in enforcement activity,” Yep wrote in the July 28 letter to Fielder.
In response, Fielder wrote in a statement that the department’s answers do not “engender trust in SFPD’s willingness to protect San Francisco residents in these dangerous situations and starkly contrasts with their statements about not being able to stand and watch if their fellow law enforcement agents in ICE get hurt.”
The Board of Supervisors passed a resolution last week calling on The City to develop a plan for responding to increased ICE activity in San Francisco and the protests that have come in response.
On July 8, protestors attempted to impede immigration officials from exiting the 100 Montgomery St. immigration courthouse with a person in custody. Video from the scene showed the officials taking the person into a van, which was then driven through a group protesters, at one point tossing a woman from the hood of the vehicle.
Pressed to explain why police did not intervene, Yep wrote that “the incident on July 8, 2025 evolved quickly. SFPD is examining the incident.”
San Francisco is not alone in questioning the role its local law enforcement should play in ongoing confrontations between protestors and ICE, which has ramped up its efforts to detain and deport immigrants under President Donald Trump.
In San Francisco and elsewhere, the federal government has employed a new strategy in which immigration judges are asked to dismiss asylum-seekers’ cases, allowing those individuals to be quickly detained and deported.
City leaders expect ICE activity to only increase, particularly after Congress approved the Trump-promoted One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which set aside about $170 billion to support the administration’s policies on immigration and border enforcement.
In his response to San Francisco lawmakers, Yep largely reiterated existing San Francisco policies.
“SFPD’s primary purpose is to ‘preserve the public peace, prevent and detect crime, and protect the rights of persons and property by enforcing the laws of the United States, the State of California, and the City and County,’” Yep wrote. “This means ensuring public safety in San Francisco. If dispatch receives a call regarding a crime or a danger to public safety, dispatch will assign the call to SFPD officers who will respond.”
But he noted that department policy states “[m]embers may provide an emergency response to ICE/CBP to the same extent members would respond to an emergency to any other law enforcement agency.”
In other words, local police could provide backup to ICE if the officer in charge “determines there is an emergency posing a significant and immediate danger to public safety or to the ICE/CBP agents,” Yep wrote.
The response from Yep is emblematic of the Lurie administration’s consistent approach when confronted with Trump policies or actions — disagree, but avoid direct confrontation with the White House.
In regards to immigration enforcement, Lurie has said “our policies make us a safer city,” and that “the policies that are being enacted nationwide are making our city less safe.”
That is largely a reiteration of the purpose of the sanctuary ordinance, which has existed in San Francisco for more than 30 years with the goal of making The City safer by encouraging people — regardless of their immigration statuses — to report crimes to police.
In general, understandings between government agencies are built on an assumption of good faith and lawful practice, said Bree Bernwanger, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California.
“That is just not what we are seeing from ICE right now,” Bernwanger said. “ICE is not entitled to good faith. We are seeing ICE abuse its power.”
Fielder’s inquiry to the City Controller’s Office also revealed that San Francisco law-enforcement agencies have tallied about $350,000 in overtime costs while responding to three protests in San Francisco against Trump and ICE.
“I share Supervisor Fielder’s concern about where the attention is being spent, and we will work with elevating those concerns to ensure that our police are focusing on local San Francisco challenges,” Supervisor Bilal Mahmood told The Examiner.
Federal immigration enforcement has put San Franciscans on edge. Supervisors have noted that immigration officials are often masked.
“Residents in the city have reported to the City and County of San Francisco being contacted by individuals purporting to be federal agents, but been unable to verify this as fact, making it virtually impossible for the public or city officials to distinguish between legitimate government actions or potentially fraudulent or even deadly impersonations,” the July 8 resolution states.
In response to Fielder’s questions, Yep wrote that the police department lacks the authority to ensure agencies like ICE are “honoring constitutional rights to due process,” but local officers can respond and attempt — but not require — verification that a given action is being conducted by federal law enforcement.
In Fielder’s view, Yep’s comments stop short of the action taken in Los Angeles, where leaders instructed officers to perform “appropriate enforcement action” if they can not verify whether a person is actually acting on behalf of federal law enforcement.
“San Francisco can’t call itself a sanctuary city if local law enforcement stands by while ICE operates unchecked in our neighborhoods,” Fielder said. “SFPD claims it will intervene in suspected kidnappings but refuses to acknowledge that ICE agents snatching people off the street might warrant the same scrutiny.”
