San Francisco-Mayor Daniel Lurie said Oct. 20 that sending the National Guard to San Francisco will not help with issues that the city has already made progress with.

“I am deeply grateful to the members of our military for their service to our country, but the National Guard does not have the authority to arrest drug dealers—and sending them to San Francisco will do nothing to get fentanyl off the streets or make our city safer,” Lurie said in a statement.

This was Lurie’s direct response to President Donald Trump’s comments of making San Francisco the next target for his administration’s crackdown on crime.

On Oct. 19, Trump said on Fox’s Sunday Morning show, “San Francisco was truly one of the great cities of the world, and then 15 years ago, it went woke. We’re going to go to San Francisco. We’re going to make it great.”

Trump told reporters the same day on Air Force One, “We want to have great crime-free cities. So, I’d be allowed to use, if I wanted, the Insurrection Act, and then all of this nonsense would go away.”

Lurie, who was elected mayor in November 2024, said he has put keeping San Francisco safe as top priority every day since his inauguration.

“With the support of local law enforcement, community leaders, and the appropriate federal law enforcement partners, we’re achieving that goal without compromising our values or our laws,” Lurie said.

Lurie said he welcomes stronger coordination with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and the U.S. Attorney “to execute targeted operations, arrest drug dealers, and disrupt drug markets and multinational cartels.”

A joint federal, state, and local law enforcement initiative named “All Hands on Deck,” was launched on Nov. 3, 2023, to crack down San Francisco’s infamous open air drug market.

In a safety briefing on Oct. 17, ahead of the “No Kings” protest the next day, Lurie said that law enforcement actions since he became mayor have been effective at reducing crime.

“Over the last nine months, we have backed that up,” he said, referring to the joint initiative against drugs. “Rebuilding the ranks of our public safety agencies, strengthening coordination across departments, and strategically deploying technology. It’s working and this week proved it.”

From Oct. 14–16, more than 4,500 people attended Salesforce’s “DreamForce 2025” conference in the city, with no reports of any major incidents.

“Once again, the eyes of the world were on San Francisco and we delivered. That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because of planning and partnership,” Lurie said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an X post that sending the National Guard into San Francisco “will ruin one of America’s greatest cities.”

However, San Francisco billionaire, entrepreneur, and investor David Sacks, who serves in the Trump administration, said in an Oct. 18 podcast that, “San Francisco is a pretty obvious city to send in the National Guard, because we have this downtown area where it’s like that zombie city in the Walking Dead on part of Market Street.

“And everybody understands that it’s because they won’t stop the drug dealing. So you’ve got open-air drug markets there on the main business thoroughfare of town which is Market Street,” he said.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie speaks during a Domestic Violence Awareness Month rally in San Francisco, Calif., on Oct. 21, 2025. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Sacks said Lurie has been the city’s best mayor in decades, and threw his support behind District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who was one of the leaders in the campaign to recall former progressive DA Chesa Boudin in 2022. “But they’re still working within the confines of a legal system here,” Sacks said of their limited powers.

“I think it would be a relatively easy thing to clean up if they send the National Guard,” Sacks said.

Trump has sent National Guard troops into the six cities so far—Los Angeles in California, Portland in Oregon, Chicago and Missouri in Illinois, Memphis in Tennessee, and Washington D.C.—some with invitations from state governors and others without under Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code.

Courts have ruled that the National Guard deployments under Title 10 are “likely” lawful uses of power by the president.