President-Elect Trump issued his pledges of action for his first 100 days in office on Wednesday, and among them he promises to cut off all federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities. This could mean that over $1 billion a year that comes to San Francisco from the federal government will disappear, which could cause some serious problems for the city's budget. Whether Trump can or will make good on this promise is up in the air, but as Supervisor John Avalos tells the Examiner, "He’s erratic enough to do or not to do it until he suddenly does it."
SF currently gets $478 million a year from the federal government, as well as $915 million from the state of California, a large portion of which is federal money. And that doesn't include the federal funds that have gone toward things like the Central Subway.
"He’s going to use the power of presidency and the power of money to punish us,” Sup. David Campos tells the Ex. And that could hold true given how San Francisco was held up as an example for being soft on immigration in the wake of the July 2015 shooting of Kate Steinle by an illegal immigrant who had previously been deported.
Rep. Jackie Speier told the Mercury-News, optimistically, that she does not expect Trump to order the deportations of large numbers of illegal immigrants, though that has certainly been among his promises and out-of-control immigration has been central among the falsehoods that helped get Trump elected by paranoid Midwestern white people.
"This is an interesting time that we’ll learn from, and it won’t bring down the republic, which has withstood much stronger quakes," the congresswoman tells the paper.
Mayor Ed Lee, meanwhile, won't be swayed by Trump's threats. “Being a sanctuary city for me is the DNA of San Francisco,” the Examiner reports the mayor saying at a Thursday morning news conference. “We’ll always be a sanctuary city. We’re not going to change who we are."
Related: SF Clarifies Its Sanctuary City Policy, And Illegal Immigrants With Serious Felonies Are Exceptions
