A repository of a significant piece of California history in San Bruno is set to be shuttered by the federal government, and it causing alarm for historians and researchers who wonder where they will need to go to access the trove of genealogical and immigration records.

The National Archives at San Francisco, one of multiple federal records centers around the country, is located in San Bruno, and as KQED reports, it is set to close within a few months. An email about the closure was sent to the center's staff last Wednesday.

Among the records that are stored at the center are the full case file and immigration records related to the United States v. Wong Kim Ark case, the birthright citizenship case out of San Francisco that was widely cited in today's Supreme Court decision upholding birthright citizenship.

The 75,000-square-foot records center also holds immigration records for hundreds of thousands who immigrated through Angel Island, records pertaining to Indigenous tribes across California and Nevada, and documents from federal agencies with offices in Northern California, Guam, Hawaii, Nevada, and American Samoa, as KQED explains. There are also inmate records from Alcatraz, and plenty of other primary source materials useful to researchers and genealogists alike.

Kris Kasianovitz, library director at the Institute of Governmental Studies Library at UC Berkeley, tells KQED, "This just feels like an attack on access to key government records. They are there in order to provide evidence for the historical record for the long-term."

The records will reportedly be relocated to other record centers, but the email to staff did not reportedly specify which. As NBC Bay Area reports, the email noted that closures are coming for National Archives centers in Seattle and Chicago as well.

Previously, in 2024, the National Archives announced closures of centers in New York, Illinois, and Ohio, which were billed as a cost-cutting measure.

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