On Thursday, after a phone call to Mayor Daniel Lurie reportedly arranged after a concerted lobbying effort by tech executives, President Donald Trump “called off” a planned immigration “surge” in San Francisco.
Federal officials confirmed on Friday that the rest of the Bay Area would also be spared.
That respite may not be forever. President Trump wrote in his post announcing the pullback that he and Lurie had spoken about the mayor’s efforts to address crime, and that he was told Lurie is “making substantial progress.”
The president will “give him a chance,” he wrote, before ending with his characteristic “Stay tuned!”
If the feds do come back to the Bay Area, San Francisco may not be their first target.
Other Bay Area cities are home to much larger populations of undocumented immigrants, according to data from the think tank Migration Policy Institute.
While San Francisco is home to about 42,000 undocumented residents, Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose and Sunnyvale, is home to more than double that number: 119,000.
Alameda County, which includes Oakland, Berkeley and Fremont, is home to 103,000 undocumented residents. Contra Costa and San Mateo counties both also have larger undocumented populations at 68,000 and 56,000, respectively.
San Francisco has only 9.5 percent of the undocumented migrants in the seven Bay Area counties for which the data is available.
The same trend follows for the number of immigrants overall. According to 2024 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, some 811,000 foreign-born residents live in Santa Clara County and 584,000 in Alameda County.
Meanwhile, around 283,000 live in San Francisco. In those three counties, 19 to 22 percent of foreign-born residents are naturalized U.S. citizens.
While San Francisco may have a small overall share of all the immigrants living in the Bay Area, immigrants still make up a large portion of the city’s residents.
Undocumented immigrants are an estimated five percent of the city’s population, and foreign-born residents account for over a third at 34 percent.
Why is this surprising? The city allows no housing to be built, where are immigrants going to live?
“The city allows no housing to be built” – The YIMBY lie, repeated for effect, from the same guy who said low-income housing wasn’t necessary or important.
You apologize for market rate condo towers being built exclusively and tell the poor to leave SF on the daily, right here. “Why is this surprising” is right, but not for the reasons you seem to want to blurt out every single time.
You’re not ever concerned about building low-income housing.
Pretending to give a care about illegal immigrants now? Puhlease.
We can read your previous “contributions” to the subject, en masse.
It’s very expensive to live in SF. Undocumented immigrants don’t have as much money so they choose to live where they can afford to love. Only makes sense there would be the lowest amount in the most expensive county.
This also doesn’t discuss job potential. Lots of gardeners in San Mateo and other suburban counties. Not needed in SF with all that cement.
Why would we expect building almost exclusively market rate housing would at all help the poor? It’s the (lie) refrain of YIMBYs in the pockets of their Billionaire Private Equity masters, it has no bearing on the reality of the housing crisis.
Maybe “helping the poor” is not the top public policy imperative or voter priority?
Maybe attracting skilled workers who can add to the economy is the real economic mandate?
I doubt that many poor people move to SF any more because of the cost. But plenty of 300K a year AI engineers are moving here. They need housing too, and we need them more than we need poor people.
Any difference in the data if you overlay income information?
Or similar story?
Most of that information is not accurate or available because the super riche tend to diversify and have investments that can’t be personally tracked, unlike income reported to the IRS for one example.
It’s always important to distinguish between illegal immigrants and immigrants.
Illegal immigrants can self-deport and come back with a valid visa.
Why should they get special treatment when they don’t follow the immigration rules?