On Aug. 5, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s team made an announcement: The mayor had “secured” $3.4 million in philanthropic funding to support immigrant legal defense.
The news was billed as “Another Step from Mayor Lurie to Support Immigrant Community Despite Historic Budget Deficit,” his office wrote, to “meet the increased demand for immigration defense services.”
But Lurie, in fact, did not secure — or even help to secure — the money in question.
Months ago, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office applied for a grant from the Crankstart Foundation, the personal foundation of venture capitalist billionaire Michael Moritz, to hire three attorneys and a paralegal for its immigrant defense unit.
Crankstart awarded them the grant, which Mission Local first reported on June 23.
Legislation approving such a grant is a required formality: The Board of Supervisors has to pass a law to “accept and expend” the money, which it does routinely. In the 12 months from Aug. 15, 2024, to today, “accept and expend” laws were introduced no fewer than 78 times.
Any supervisor or the mayor can sponsor them, often as a way to indicate support for the issue. In the case of the Crankstart ordinance, District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood was a co-sponsor along with Lurie.
“That’s not much of a lift,” said David Campos, the former District 9 supervisor from 2008 to 2016. He called the action “very routine.” “Taking the technical step of accepting a grant that someone else applied for is not what they should be doing to protect immigrants.”
Bevan Dufty, the District 8 supervisor from 2002 to 2011, said there was a “certain pro forma-ness” about Lurie’s action, but that “it’s good for him to be associated with this issue.” Supervisors and mayors, he said, take the step of sponsoring such legislation to showcase support and help shepherd it along.
The mayor’s action was “not an administrative step,” wrote Charles Lutvak, the mayor’s spokesman. “It’s a legislative step that is required for them to receive that money, and the mayor led the legislation.” Lurie helped “secure” the funding, Lutvak wrote in an email — the press release says the same, twice.
Lutvak did not respond to questions about whether Lurie or his team had provided any additional support beyond sponsoring the legislation to the public defender’s office in securing the grant.
Crankstart, which is known to be discreet in its giving, wrote in its approval of the grant that any public press releases should be run by the foundation first.
A consultant for Crankstart grantees was seemingly confused by the mayor’s release: On Aug. 5, the day Lurie’s office sent out its statement, the consultant emailed the public defender’s office and asked: “Is this new funding for the Office of the Public Defender or the funding pending from Crankstart?” according to emails obtained in a public records request.
The public defender’s office replied that yes, it was the same funding, but that “we didn’t know that this press release was coming out.”
Crankstart declined to comment on the issue.
Lurie decides not to renew Breed’s immigrant legal defense funding
Despite the claim that Lurie is increasing immigrant defense funding amidst a budget deficit, he has effectively reduced funding for immigrant legal defense.
At the end of 2024, in preparation for Donald Trump’s second presidential term, Mayor London Breed gave local immigrant legal services groups one-time funds of $878,000, according to a budget proposal provided to members of the Board of Supervisors.
Lurie declined to renew that funding, a de facto cut, even after immigrant defense groups begged him to find the cash.
“This funding is urgent,” wrote Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, the executive director of Carecen, in a June email to the mayor’s staff obtained by Mission Local.
“It is urgent that our local government understand the real impact of federal enforcement, criminalization and cruel and inhumane attacks on members of our city [sic] social fabric and essential workers in San Francisco.”
She was unsuccessful. The Breed-era grant expired in June. Dugan-Cuadra confirmed Carecen and its partner organizations have been without the money since. (Dugan-Cuadra otherwise declined to comment for this article, and did not provide the June email to Mission Local.)
San Francisco largely funds immigration legal services through the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, which partners with local groups. Those include Carecen and 15 other nonprofits that are part of the San Francisco Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative.
San Francisco also funds immigration defense through the Public Defender’s Office, which has an immigration unit.
Funding would have gone to front-line ICE defense
Lurie’s decision not to renew Breed’s grant comes during a spike in immigration enforcement in San Francisco.
Immigrants are arrested daily at check-ins at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office at 630 Sansome St., and after routine court hearings at 630 Sansome St. or 100 Montgomery St. Both buildings are in San Francisco’s Financial District.
The arrests have meant more demand for the Bay Area’s already-stretched free or reduced-cost legal services for immigrants.
Groups affiliated with the immigrant legal defense collaborative, like the San Francisco Bar Association, are the first line of defense to those arrests.
The Bar Association’s “Attorney of the Day” program, which places pro-bono attorneys in the courtroom, has been a lifeline for confused asylum-seekers, the vast majority of whom do not have lawyers yet, about to be nabbed by ICE.
Once, when an attorney of the day wasn’t present to warn an asylum-seeker he was going to be arrested, the man was so scared at seeing ICE agents outside of the courtroom that he tried to run. ICE officers tackled him to the ground.
The Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative also includes nonprofits that help with the local Rapid Response network, which confirms ICE activity and sends lawyers to help people detained after immigration arrests. Those lawyers often give immediate legal advice, and help connect immigrants with longer-term counsel.
The $878,000 that Breed gave the nonprofits allowed the groups to take on more cases, said Milli Atkinson, an immigration specialist at the San Francisco Bar Association. It also went towards legal clinics and hiring a coordinating attorney to bring in more volunteers.
Lurie’s press release included a list of other things his office was doing to support immigrants, like asking the San Francisco Police Department to inform the mayor’s office any time officers are called to a suspected ICE arrest, and “conducting regular emergency preparedness exercises” with a variety of city departments.
The mayor’s office did not respond to questions from Mission Local asking for more details about these policies.
Lutvak, the mayor’s spokesman, did respond to Mission Local’s question about why Lurie did not renew the grant. As a one-time grant, there was no “expectation” that the money would be allocated again, he wrote. “When one-time dollars are allocated, they go away after they’re spent.”
Additional reporting by Joe Rivano Barros.
Just like Feinstein
It is disturbing that Lurie is mistepreseting himself to the community -and perhaps alienating the grant funder by grandstanding. Not “nice.”
“Supervisors and mayors, he said, take the step of sponsoring such legislation to showcase support and help shepherd it along.”
Such horsecrap doubletalk, thank God they found Bevan Dufty to blurt it out! Perfect typecasting even.
“The mayor’s action was “not an administrative step,” wrote Charles Lutvak, the mayor’s spokesman. “It’s a legislative step that is required for them to receive that money, and the mayor led the legislation.” Lurie helped “secure” the funding, Lutvak wrote in an email — the press release says the same, twice.”
It’s _literally_ administrative legislation. It does nothing at all except accepting the x funding that someone else donated and putting it toward the y function – that is administration at its most basic level. Full stop / stop lying! There’s nothing else that was ‘legislated’ in any way by the ‘legislation’ – Lurie’s PR team is GPT-hallucinating imaginary feats to hype themselves out of our reality.
What will they try to take credit for next. And the fact that we only have the program at all because of real estate Billionaires should be also pretty disturbing given Lurie’s ‘hush-hush’ cuts to similar causes. It’s like he’s trying to pretend he’s running the City’s business when in reality these crypto/real estate Billionaires are, and he’s this desperate to avoid that look. Pathetic.
Great article, as I had been wondering about this. This $ is helpful but not enough! The Public Defender, in my understanding, helps with immigration deportation defense, but not with status-changing applications. These affirmative applications, like asylum and U-Visas, are the best way to win a deportation case. The orgs in the Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative that take these affirmative cases have multiple months-long backlogs, so it seems to me that an immigrant can get deported with a public defender’s representation while waiting for help on their affirmative asylum application. The Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative needs more funding also!
Lurie should just start taking credit for things that are NOT happening, right?
That seems to be how his PR team thinks.
thanks for exposing lurie’s naked larceny enacted while simultaneously self aggrandizing.