SF Mayor Lee stands up to Trump, says city remains a sanctuary

Mayor Ed Lee said Wednesday that San Francisco will not allow its immigrant residents “to live in fear” and affirmed the city’s 27-year-old sanctuary city policy, one hour after President Trump announced a crackdown on immigrants living in the country without permission and promising to cut federal funding to sanctuary cities.

“I am here today to say we are still a sanctuary city,” Lee said Wednesday at a City Hall news conference after Trump signed executive orders at the White House. “We stand by our sanctuary city because we want everybody to feel safe and utilize the services they deserve, including education and health care. ... It is my obligation to keep our city united, keep it strong ... crime doesn’t know documentation. Disease doesn’t know documentation.”

San Francisco’s sanctuary policy is among the most expansive in the country, limiting local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration agents in all but the most extreme circumstances. While Trump has singled out the city for criticism, all of the counties and bigger cities in the Bay Area offer some protection to immigrants in the country without authorization. Legal experts said they expected lawsuits from cities challenging Trump’s order.

Mayor Ed Lee during a news conference at City Hall on Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2017 in San Francisco, Calif. Lee addressed members of the news media following President Donald Trump's executive order targeting sanctuary cities. less Mayor Ed Lee during a news conference at City Hall on Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2017 in San Francisco, Calif. Lee addressed members of the news media following President Donald Trump's executive order targeting ... more Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 32 Caption Close SF Mayor Lee stands up to Trump, says city remains a sanctuary 1 / 32 Back to Gallery

Trump’s executive order blocks all “federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement,” to sanctuary cities. The order does not elaborate on what that means. It also revives the Secure Communities program, which asked local law enforcement to hold immigrants without legal status behind bars until federal authorities could pick them up for deportation. That program ended in 2014, and a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional.

“We are going to get the bad ones out, the criminals and drug dealers and gangsters and gang leaders,” Trump said Wednesday. “The day is over when they can stay in our country and wreak havoc.”

Lee called Trump’s order “vague” and said it was too soon to say how much money the city stood to lose. San Francisco receives about $1 billion — a little over one-tenth of the city’s $9.6 billion budget — from the federal government. In what may be a best-case scenario, Lee said the city could lose money “in specific federal grants” from the Department of Homeland Security, which he estimated to be around $10 million. Most of that money goes toward the city’s emergency preparedness program.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera said in a statement Wednesday that efforts to cut funding to sanctuary cities would be challenged in court. “This executive order tries to turn cities and states into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That’s against the law. Cities cannot be coerced into becoming the deportation arm of the federal government,” Herrera said.

Constitutional law Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Irvine School of Law, said he believed cities would have a strong legal argument because of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that, somewhat ironically, angered many Democrats.

In 1997, the court overturned the provision of the Brady gun control law requiring states to do background checks on prospective handgun buyers because the justices said it violated the principle of state sovereignty. And in 2012, the court invalidated a provision of the Affordable Care Act threatening states with loss of Medicaid funding if they refused to expand the program.

“The bottom line is the federal government can’t coerce state and local governments to administer a federal program,” Chemerinsky said.

San Francisco officials formed a united front in defense of the sanctuary city status right after the November election, although some immigrant-rights advocates said Lee should do more. Lee set aside $3 million annually to boost services for immigrants facing deportation but refused to allocate money to fund the public defender’s defense of those immigrants.

On Wednesday, around 100 people stood on the steps of City Hall chanting “No papers, no fear. Dignity is standing here,” in English and Spanish.

About 44,000 people who are undocumented live in San Francisco, according to estimates using 2014 census data. San Francisco is one of about 300 sanctuary cities nationwide, including Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, in addition to Oakland, Berkeley and San Jose in the Bay Area.

In Berkeley on Wednesday, Daniel Maher, 42, worried about his future. He moved to the United States from Macau when he was 3 years old. In 1994, he committed an armed robbery and was convicted of kidnapping, robbery and firearms offenses. He served five years in state prison and was stripped of his green card.

He was released and said he was ordered to check in with Homeland Security on a regular basis. Over the next 14 years, Maher put his life together. He now operates the recycling program at Ecology Center, a nonprofit environmental organization in Berkeley. He has a 7-year-old son and plans to marry his girlfriend this year.

“I am scared,” Maher said. “My family is scared, but what can we do?”

Around the Bay Area, officials were trying to assess the impact of Trump’s order.

“This is really, really disturbing to us,” said Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan. “We were, of course, hoping for the best, but we’ve been expecting the worst, and now here we are.”

The Alameda County’s Sheriff’s Office only turns prisoners over to federal immigration officials if special court orders are involved.

Chan said Alameda County has about 105,000 “undocumented people” who are adults, plus “a lot of unaccompanied minors — 9,000 or so.” That is one of the largest such county populations in the state, along with those of San Francisco and Los Angeles, she said.

She said her board was going to hold an open public forum Thursday with its federal lobbyist to discuss how to react to the president’s order, but she said she believed at the very least the funding-cut mandate will be less severe than some fear.

“It’s not like Trump can just do this,” she said. “Some of the federal money we get is from legislative action, and anything by statute can’t just be cut. We get grants for policing, streets, housing and more that falls under that category, and I’m not sure how broadly he’s talking.

In Marin County, Sheriff Robert Doyle said he would assess the president’s order, “but I have always cooperated to the extent that I can legally with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and will continue to do that.”

The main concern he has right now, he said, is what provisions might have to be made if his jail suddenly begins to fill up with immigrants marked for deportation or other action under the president’s new policies.

“The thing the president has to understand is: Where is he going to put everyone he judges to be illegal?” Doyle said. “Every jail I know of in California is overcrowded. Where is he going to put all these millions of people?”

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf issued a joint statement with the mayors of San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose, all promising to fight Trump’s order. She noted that Oakland receives $130 million a year in federal funding for programs such as Head Start, which serves disadvantaged children, and said “how cutting that makes America safer is beyond me.”

Oakland and Alameda County are both creating emergency funds to create “a rapid response deportation defense service,” Schaaf said, and with San Francisco Foundation matching funds expects to have at least $1.5 million on hand.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writers Erin Allday and Lizzie Johnson contributed to this story.

Emily Green and Kevin Fagan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com, kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @emilytgreen @kevinChron

Bay Area sanctuaries for immigrants

Bay Area cities and counties that offer any form of sanctuary-style protections for immigrants who have no official residency authorization, from resisting many forms of inquiry by federal officials to cooperating only with court-ordered holds:

Counties: San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Santa Clara

Cities: San Francisco (which is a city and a county), Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, San Jose, Concord, Novato, San Rafael, Alameda