San Francisco’s website informs visitors that, if they are unsure whether a suspicious vehicle or uniformed officer is immigration enforcement, or if a friend or family member has been detained and needs legal help, they should call 415-200-1548, the hotline for the San Francisco Rapid Response Network.
Even city officials, including the mayor and supervisors, point reporters to the network when asked to verify Immigration and Customs Enforcement sightings.
But a portion of the funding that maintains that hotline is now being cut: About $1.4 million in funds for San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network and the San Francisco Rapid Response Network was not restored in the city budget this year.
That portion of its budget came as supplemental funds in October 2025. The nonprofit lost its funding because it failed to get its request in time, according to its executive director’s account of a conversation with Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office.
The nonprofit that manages the hotline says that while the hotline will stay up, the cut means callers may not be able to get a live agent on the line after-hours or, if there is a particularly large volume of calls, the response will be slower.
Mission Action, the nonprofit that administers the hotline, says it will need to lay off backup dispatchers because of the cuts.
“This under-investment is deeply concerning, especially for our longstanding Sanctuary City,” said Laura Valdez, the executive director of Mission Action.
The loss could mean rumors of an unverified ICE sighting spread, or a family member goes without information about a detained loved one or without access to an attorney.
The funding cut is unusual: While Mission Action is receiving all of the funds it had in last year’s budget — $3.7 million— it also asked for $1.64 million that Mayor Lurie and several supervisors allotted last October as a supplement to boost immigration services.
That deal came the same day as President Donald Trump’s threatened “surge” of federal agents to the Bay Area, which was called off at the last minute.
Aside from funding the San Francisco Rapid Response Network’s hotline, portions of the $1.6 million supplemental fund also supported know-your-rights events, and helped immigrants file asylum applications and cover fee waivers. Those services help immigrants navigate a sometimes-confusing court process.
Without this funding, Valdez said, several nonprofits may lay off attorneys and paralegals.
The final city budget was $16.9 billion; $1.6 million is 0.01 percent of that. But the funding gap was seemingly not due to cost, but rather because of a confusion over timeliness, according to Valdez.
The mayor’s office told Valdez on June 1 that Mission Action would not receive the funds it had asked for because the nonprofit did not request them in time, Valdez said. The nonprofit sent its budget request on May 20.
Valdez, for her part, said she was not given a clear deadline, and that because the nonprofit operates on a “majority consensus model,” it was waiting to meet with its partners at the Rapid Response Hotline to finalize the request.
The San Francisco Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative, by contrast, another group that distributes funds to other smaller immigration nonprofits and was also included in that October budget supplemental, received its $1.86 million portion of those funds in the mayor’s final budget. That nonprofit submitted its budget ask on April 15, according to its executive director.
The mayor’s office declined to comment. Multiple people familiar with the process said that the mayor’s office had made it clear it wanted to fund the hotline, and had hoped to receive a specific budget request earlier on in the process.
Anya Worley-Ziegman, the director of the People’s Budget Coalition, who has been heavily involved in pushing against budget cuts, was unhappy about the snafu.
“Ultimately, it is a matter of building the political will,” said Worley-Ziegmann. Though, she added, “it seems there were delays in getting the proposal to them.”
Worley-Ziegmann said that almost all of the groups that started their advocacy early on and submitted budget requests earlier were funded.
“You have to fight,” said Worley-Ziegmann, adding that the mayor’s office expected nonprofits to ask clearly and early for the funds.
Mission Action will still get some funds back, however: After news that its request was not included in the initial budget, it began advocating with the Board of Supervisors to fund a portion of the missing funds.
In the end, $243,000 was promised as “add-back” funds.
Francis Hsieh, legislative director for budget chair Connie Chan, said supervisors would have liked to put in even more money, but that they were “balancing a lot of priorities.”
Good. We shouldn’t be spending city money to help people break the law.
Imagine being told that a vital service won’t be funded because the budget request was submitted past a deadline but not being able to clearly state what the deadline was. If I was the director, that would be my priority to find out especially if none was communicated. A deadline date for submission seems like such a basic and fundamental concept for budgeting yet here we are. SMH
The city swears up and down that it’s sanctuary policies are only about non-cooperation with immigration enforcement, not obstruction or interference. Yet they fund a hotline that serves no purpose other than to interfere with immigration enforcement. The city is out of line – I hope they get sued.