San Francisco mayor says he convinced Trump in phone call not to surge federal agents to city

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie told CBS News Friday that he was able to convince President Trump in a phone call several months ago not to deploy federal agents to San Francisco.

In a live interview with “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil, Lurie, a moderate Democrat, said that the president called him while he was sitting in a car.

“I took the call, and his first question to me was, ‘How’s it going there?'” Lurie recounted.

In October, sources told CBS News that the president was planning to surge Border Patrol agents to San Francisco as part of the White House’s ongoing immigration crackdown that has seen it deploy federal immigration officers to cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans and most recently, Minneapolis.

At the time, the reports prompted pushback from California officials, including Lurie and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

However, shortly after that report, Mr. Trump announced that he had called off the plan to “surge” federal agents to San Francisco following a conversation with Lurie.

“I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post on Oct. 23. The president also noted that “friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge.”

“I told him what I would tell you,” Lurie said Friday of his October call with Mr. Trump. “San Francisco is a city on the rise, crime is at historic lows, all economic indicators are on the right direction, and our local law enforcement is doing an incredible job.”

Going back to the pandemic, San Francisco has often been the strong focus of criticism from Republican lawmakers over its struggles in combatting crime and homelessness. It was voter frustration over those issues that helped Lurie defeat incumbent London Breed in November 2024.

Lurie, however, acknowledged that the city still has “a lot of work to do.”

“I’m clear-eyed about our challenges still,” Lurie said. “In the daytime, we have really ended our drug markets. At night, we still struggle on some of the those blocks that you see.”

An heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune, Lurie also declined Friday to say whether he supports a proposed California ballot initiative that would institute a one-time 5% tax on the state’s billionaires.

“I stay laser-focused on what I can control, and that’s what’s happening here in San Francisco,” Lurie said. “I don’t get involved on what may or may not happen up in Sacramento, or frankly, for that matter, D.C.”