Bay Area cities braced for trouble on Wednesday as President Trump signed orders to clamp down on illegal immigration. The move, announced by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, sets up a showdown between the White House and a number of cities in the region and beyond whose leaders have promised to fight efforts to hand over illegal immigrants to the federal government for deportation.

Trump also signed executive orders to direct funds to begin the construction of a wall on the southern border – “Mexico will pay for it,” Spicer said – and provide additional tools to the Department of Homeland Security to clamp down on illegal immigration, including the provision of more detention space. The action will also end the so-called “catch and release” policy, and will prioritize the deportation of undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, according to a report by Politico.

In his orders, Trump called for an increased effort to stop illegal immigration, including the restoration of the “Secure Communities Program.” The State Department will take steps to ensure countries of origin accept the return of illegal immigrants who committed criminal acts, Spicer said, and “sanctuary cities” will be stripped of federal grants.

“It’s sad Donald Trump thinks these executive orders make America safer, and it’s sad he thinks they make America better,” said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) in a statement. “Here in California we are concerned that these policies are based more on campaign buzzwords than on legal and economic realities. The language is so broad that mass deportations are likely without real due process.”

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That last proposal could be painful in a number of ways for the Bay Area: Oakland, for example, is receiving more than $130 million in ongoing and one-time grants from Uncle Sam in its current fiscal year. That money, now threatened, helps pay for everything from school lunches for poor kids to seismic retrofitting to cops in the street. San Jose officials say the city received $78 million in federal funding this year.

San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and Alameda counties, as well as several local cities like Oakland and San Jose, have declared themselves sanctuaries, along with dozens of other municipalities up and down the state, so potentially millions of dollars in federal funding could be at stake. While Santa Clara County has never officially designated itself as a sanctuary destination, its supervisors have repeatedly said they would not cooperate with so-called ICE holds. These are requests that jail officials notify federal immigration officers before releasing a non-citizen and to hold off for 48 hours before doing so, giving the feds time to take the person into custody. After Steinle’s death, supervisors agreed to do so in cases of inmates who have committed crimes designated as serious or violent. But it’s unclear whether the county will be lumped in with official sanctuary sites.

“It depends on exactly what the feds say and what they consider to be a Sanctuary County,” said county executive Jeff Smith. “we haven’t had a resolution to that effect and that detail will be important.”

About $1 billion of the county’s $6.2 billion budget comes from federal sources, mostly related to health, hospital and social services programs. Smith said if there is a threat to withhold funds they will pursue remedies through administrative appeals in the courts.

“We’ve been prepping for that and county counsel is ready to address any attacks on particular funding sources,” he said. “We have been doing research on all potential impacts.”

For now, Trump’s not saying how he intends to force cities to cooperate. Avideh Moussavian, policy attorney in National Immigration Law Center’s Washington, D.C. office, said it’s unclear if Congress can strip sanctuary cities of federal funding. But if Congress tries, she guarantees many pro-immigrant agencies will fight back.

“The essential question is,” she said, “can Congress legislate on this and if so, can it mandate compliance with ICE detainers.”

Moussavian said this essentially rises to the level of coercion in having the federal government threatening to take away substantial amounts of funding, particularly because the funding wouldn’t be just immigration-related. She says it’s also unclear how Trump’s orders would fare in a court battle with cities and counties. She said “a lot of places are arming themselves with legal arguments” to try and fight the White House.

On the other hand, Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform or FAIR, said his group thinks that “cutting off federal funding and other grants is an appropriate response for local jurisdictions that obstruct federal immigration laws.

“There’s very little reason,” he said, “why Congress should not include this sort of language in appropriations measures that restrict federal funding on the fact that these jurisdictions are obstructing federal immigration policy. It takes two to create an impasse. These local jurisdictions could very easily avoid these sorts of situations.”

State Assemblywoman and Latino Caucus Vice Chairwoman ​Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, was quick to respond, releasing a statement calling Trump’s actions “embarrassingly un-American.”

​”​Forcing police to freelance as border agents doesn’t make our communities safer, nor does wasting billions of American tax dollars to further divide our binational community with a border wall,” she said. “This is embarrassingly un-American.”

Spicer, the press secretary, said that “federal agencies are going to unapologetically enforce the law, no ifs, ands, or buts.” A program to aid Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in targeting undocumented immigrants for removal will be reinstated, Spicer said, and the State Department will withhold visas for nations who refuse to accept deportees being sent back to their home countries. Federal grant money will be stripped from so-called “sanctuary cities” that harbor undocumented immigrants from the federal government, Spicer said.

According to Politico, family members of people killed by immigrants in the United States illegally have been invited to participate in an executive order ceremony. That could have included the family of Kathryn “Kate” Steinle, a young Pleasanton woman who was murdered on San Francisco’s Pier 14 while she was walking with her father, but a spokesperson said early Wednesday the family would not be joining Trump.

The man charged with Kate Steinle’s killing, Francisco Sanchez, was in a Bay Area jail shortly before the shooting and should have been turned over to federal immigration officials upon his release, instead of being set free, according to the Department of Homeland Security. But since San Francisco city and county are sanctuaries for immigrants, they do not turn over undocumented people – if they don’t have active warrants out – simply because immigration officials want them to.

Trump made no mention Wednesday of Steinle, the San Francisco woman allegedly gunned down in 2015 by a Mexican national who has entered the country five times illegally. In the early days of his campaign, Trump frequently used the killing as an example of what he called lax boarder and immigration policies and mentioned Steinle in his acceptance speech at the GOP convention last year. A spokesman for the family said Steinle’s parents did not attend the speech and he didn’t know if they had been invited. An email to the White House press office was not immediately returned. Steinle’s alleged killer, Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez, is scheduled to go trial on second degree murder charges next month. His lawyers have call the shooting an accident.

Trump, who during his presidential campaign used Steinle’s death as an example of why our borders are unsafe, had promised to take action against sanctuary cities and today he’s apparently moving forward with that effort. Reports suggest the president’s order would force cities, most of them liberal, to honor the government’s orders, although details on how federal authorities would do that remained sketchy. Leaders in most, but not all, of these cities have said they’d turn over immigrants if they’d been charged with serious crimes like murder.

Reaction to Trump’s orders was swift and angry.

“The hateful, zenophobic, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that was a hallmark of the Trump campaign is starting to become a reality,” Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, said on conference call with reporters. “Chaos and destruction will be the outcome.”

Spicer said the executive actions would include directives to the Department of Homeland Security to examine ways to limit federal funding to “sanctuary cities” that do not report undocumented immigrants to federal authorities.

And in a statement, David Huerta, president of SEIU United Service Workers West said Trump in his orders was “appealing to fear, cynicism, and hatred.

“In California, a state where more than one in four residents are immigrants, the fear-mongering and racism behind these orders take on particular meaning. They represent attacks on our communities, our families, our colleagues, our neighbors and union brothers and sisters. They won’t stand. SEIU members applaud and support the efforts of the California leaders who have committed to defend all the people who are the strength of our diverse Golden State.”

In a statement, Melissa Rodgers with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center said “we are gravely concerned by President Trump’s decision to make good on the xenophobic promises he made on the campaign trail. While we hoped he would leave rhetoric behind and focus on governing, it’s apparent anti-immigrant vitriol from the campaign is now coming to life. These executive orders go against traditional American values of welcoming new immigrants and will do considerable harm to our country and the people who call America home.”

Staff writers Tatiana Sanchez and Eric Kurhi also contributed to this report.

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