Brad Heath
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to send federal agents and even soldiers to San Francisco this year to fight crime. Instead, his administration quietly eliminated law enforcement, leaving the city with less help in dealing with a deadly drug crisis.
A Reuters examination of more than 15 million federal court records found that as of November 1, the number of people charged with federal crimes in San Francisco and surrounding cities was down 40% from the same period in 2024, one of the most abrupt retreats across the United States in prosecuting drug dealers, gun crimes and other alleged offenders.
The number of people accused of violating drug laws fell further, by about 50%, to 137, according to a Reuters analysis.
Instead, federal agents who once built cases are now rounding up immigrants and deporting them, taking away one of the most powerful tools to combat everything from drug trafficking to gun violence, according to nine current and former federal officials familiar with the changes. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the department’s work.
“They just don’t have representation in criminal cases,” said a former Justice Department official.
The dramatic retreat comes despite Trump describing the city as “destroyed” and “a mess” under Democrats and insisting it needs federal help to turn things around.
As recently as October, Trump promised a crackdown on the city and began assembling a force of immigration officers and other agents to rush into San Francisco to arrest immigrants and try to solve other crimes, much as the administration had done in Washington, D.C., and Memphis. Trump said in a social media post that he canceled the plan after “my friends who live in the area called” and urged him not to go ahead.
The Trump administration has launched the most sweeping federal law enforcement reforms in a decade, shifting thousands of agents to focus on immigration issues. This shift undermines the government’s ability to prosecute people for almost every other behavior.
San Francisco isn’t the only city experiencing an economic slowdown. Reuters reported in September that as the Trump administration shifted the focus of agents and lawyers to immigration, the number of people charged with federal drug crimes nationwide fell by about 10% this year to the lowest level in at least three decades.
A Reuters review of federal court records found that San Francisco is among the cities where the economic slowdown has been most pronounced, and that the city’s liberal leanings have made it a target for conservative administrations.
Craig Missakian, the U.S. attorney for Northern California, which includes San Francisco, said in a statement that there were “many reasons for the drop in prosecutions there that cannot be explained by statistics alone.” He declined to comment on what they were.
Misakian said there is “a natural ebb and flow to drug prosecutions” and that his office “has made drug enforcement a top priority.”
White House press secretary Abigail Jackson said “illegal immigrants now being apprehended and deported include terrorists, human traffickers, drug smugglers and others involved in or organizing high-level, coordinated crimes,” but did not comment specifically on the activity in San Francisco in response to questions from Reuters. The Justice Department also denied that its focus on immigration affected its other work.
Reuters examined the extent of the Justice Department’s retractions by gathering files from Westlaw, an online legal research service owned by Thomson Reuters, for every open federal criminal case since the 1990s.
The news agency compared the number of people charged with crimes between January 1 and November 1 with the same period in previous years. In some cases, Reuters uses artificial intelligence to help classify the charges people face. A review of a random set of records revealed an assessment accuracy of 98%.
The records show a breakdown in nearly every type of federal criminal enforcement in Northern California this year.
As of November 1, the Department of Justice had filed criminal charges against 355 people in Northern California, down from 575 during the same period last year and the lowest number of cases in at least two decades. That slowdown includes federal courthouses in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose.
Federal charges are an especially powerful tool in fighting crime because they often carry longer prison sentences. “Drug dealers are 100 percent afraid of the federal government,” said Tom Wolf, a former addict who advocates for treatment with Rescue SF, a citywide coalition working to combat homelessness.
But what about the city police? “They laugh at them. Drug dealers have no fear of them,” Wolfe said, because an arrest in state court often means a quick return to the streets.
federal crackdown
The Trump administration’s retreat began less than two years after the Justice Department launched a crackdown on San Francisco’s drug trade. San Francisco is one of the wealthiest cities in the United States, thanks in large part to its status as the center of the tech economy. The effort continues, fueled by complaints from civic leaders and even judges that the streets no longer seem safe, but court records show its pace has slowed dramatically.
Initially, federal agents in the city worked with local detectives to covertly buy drugs and arrest drug dealers. Other times, they monitor drug deals and conduct raids.
To act as a deterrent, prosecutors randomly selected days on which they would charge nearly all drug dealers arrested in certain neighborhoods in federal court instead of state court, meaning they would face harsher penalties if convicted.
The crackdown has focused on the city’s Tenderloin district, about 50 blocks downtown, where people gather day and night on narrow sidewalks to sell and use drugs.
City leaders believe the crackdown drove many drug dealers off street corners during the day, although they still reappeared at night.
“Difficult to achieve”
Removing dealers is one thing. Hunting higher-level networks is a more intensive task, often requiring eavesdropping and hours of surveillance. Five current and former officials said with so many people marginalized by immigration duties, it’s difficult to call in agents to do the job.
“These things require consistent effort, and if you’re pulled in different directions, it’s difficult to achieve,” one former official said.
The Justice Department disputed that impact. “Assisting our partners with immigration enforcement does not impede our ability to successfully investigate and prosecute other types of crimes to keep American citizens safe,” spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said.
The San Francisco Chronicle has previously reported on a decline in federal drug enforcement in San Francisco, but has not previously documented the government’s overall retreat from fighting crime in Northern California.
A Reuters review of court records found that the Trump administration’s police rollback touched nearly every type of federal crime-fighting effort in San Francisco. Compared with the same period in 2024, the number of people charged with violating gun laws fell 40% to 42 between January and early November.
But it’s most obvious in the types of cases the U.S. government has long used to target high-level criminals, such as drug traffickers who shipped powerful and cheap fentanyl to San Francisco. The government has charged 32 people with conspiracy to commit drug crimes in Northern California so far this year, down about two-thirds from 89 during the same period last year, court records show.
“I know a few weeks ago or so the DEA came to the streets. This is the first time I’ve seen them arrest people in a long time,” said Omar Ward, who documents public drug use in the city online under the pseudonym JJ Smith.
A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration did not respond to questions about the claim.
The federal withdrawal comes at a particularly challenging time for San Francisco as its own police force is already under pressure. A wave of departures in recent years has left the department short of nearly 500 employees, about a quarter of its total staff. Guards complained about prison overcrowding.
“We welcome the help we’re getting,” department spokesman Evan Sernofsky said. “The federal government has been incredibly helpful, but whatever other law enforcement agencies do, it’s up to them.”
Cities and economic slowdown
San Francisco has a lower violent crime rate than most major U.S. cities. But illegal drugs, particularly fentanyl, have carved a deadly path through the community, killing more than 3,200 people in the past five years, according to the city’s medical examiner’s report.
On a recent afternoon in the Tenderloin, a few blocks from San Francisco’s federal courthouse, people smoked and injected drugs on the sidewalks. Some people were slumped on folding chairs or slumped on the sidewalk. As the sun set, a group of young men, one of whom was carrying a backpack, shouted “black and white” warnings as police cars approached and gathered more closely behind a parked car.
There are few signs that San Francisco’s drug problem is receding.
The city’s medical examiner reported that as of the end of September, 497 people had died from accidental drug overdoses, three-quarters of which were caused by fentanyl. There were 507 deaths between January and September last year.
Local police are filling in some of the gaps. The number of drug arrests made by local police in San Francisco increased by about 20% in the first 10 months of this year, from 1,310 in the same period last year to about 1,600, according to San Francisco district attorney records. This fall, Gavin Newsom ordered the State Highway Patrol to send more anti-crime teams to San Francisco and neighboring cities, including Oakland.
But Jason Finau, senior health director at the GLIDE Foundation, which provides services to drug users, said local police don’t seem to be doing enough. “Even though there are police here, it doesn’t stop people from coming here, trading openly and using,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Matt McKnight; Editing by Michael Learmonth)
