Mayor Daniel Lurie does not “talk quite often” with outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, as Noem claimed during a press conference on Thursday evening in Nashville, according to a San Francisco City Hall source briefed on the matter.
The San Francisco Standard was first to locally report on Noem’s remarks.
The source said Lurie has not spoken to Noem in four months, since the call he received from President Donald Trump on Oct. 22 preceding the president pulling back federal immigration agents and rescinding a threatened Bay Area-wide deployment.
The mayor’s office declined to comment on Noem’s statement.
During the Thursday press conference, Noem did not get into specifics about her supposed conversations with Lurie, and she did not mention immigration enforcement.
Noem was fired by Trump Thursday morning. During the Q&A portion of the Sergeant Benevolent Association Major Cities Conference today in Tennessee, which came shortly after her firing, Noem told San Francisco Police Officers Association Vice President Chris Galligan that Lurie “works with us very well” and had “great conversations” with Noem.
“You maybe have some challenges in San Francisco just because of your state laws and local laws. Although you’ve got a mayor that works with us very well. He probably doesn’t want me to talk about it a lot, actually,” Noem told the police union vice president, chuckling. “But he has been cooperative and we have great conversations and talk quite often.”
San Francisco has not seen the large-scale raids of the sort that have taken place in Los Angeles or Minneapolis, and its immigration arrests have been largely confined to the immigration courthouses or check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But the Department of Homeland Security, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement, conducts raids across the Bay Area and has made immigration arrests.
Lurie has faced criticism in the wake of his Oct. 22 call with Trump largely because he has not released all records related to that call. His office has claimed attorney-client privilege over the records but has faced censure from the city’s transparency commission, which said the mayor’s failure to disclose records related to his conversation with the president broke the law. The commission has urged Lurie to release more information.
Trump in October wrote on social media that “friends of mine” — billionaire CEOs Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Marc Benioff of Salesforce — lobbied him to not crack down on San Francisco. He credited Lurie for “very nicely” requesting the same.
Lurie’s office has said the privileged records are related to an executive directive signed the day of the call to prepare for Trump’s threatened deployment, and that it does not have any relevant records related to the call, like transcripts or notes.
Noem, during the Thursday press conference, said that, in general, cooperation between the feds and San Francisco has worked well, but she did not mention ICE or other immigration agencies. City law enforcement routinely works with the feds on issues related to drug enforcement, for instance, and has for many years and with both Democratic and Republican presidents.
On Feb. 3, for example, members of the mayor’s office met with Drug Enforcement Agency staff on the “fentanyl drug crisis” for 30 minutes, according to the mayor’s public calendar.
Noem on Thursday told the police union’s Galligan that it is “preferable” for the FBI to lead federal law enforcement in San Francisco and that “I think that works very well in your city … I think the city has seen some dramatic improvements under this leadership.”
Hard to know the truth when two known liars have conflicting stories.
It doesn’t matter, she has been fired or recycled to a new position “The Shield of America”, probably a new show at Disneyland, she can go back to her favorite pastime, shooting dogs and hopefully take her boyfriend and her blanket with her. No need to celebrate, she has been replaced with another luminary, a future Nobel prize winner for sure since the most deplorable you are, the higher are your chances you will be offered a position in this administration….only winners..! lol