Just hours after staving off what was to be President Donald Trump’s latest immigration enforcement surge in a major blue city, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie took to the national stage and announced that he would, in fact, “welcome” some federal assistance — but of a different kind.
San Francisco, CA
S.F. federal drug cases plummeted under Trump administration, data shows
Narcotics police officers arrest a drug dealer on Eddy Street during a drug bust in San Francisco on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023. Federal prosecutions of suspected drug dealers in San Francisco dropped under the Trump administration, data shows, an puzzling juxtaposition with the administration’s tough talk about crime in the city.
The planned militarized raids would harm the city and stifle its recovery, Lurie said in an Oct. 23 press conference, relaying what he told Trump the previous evening. But Lurie also explicitly encouraged the continuation of city partnerships with agencies including FBI, DEA, ATF and U.S. Attorney’s Office, he said, “to get drugs and drug dealers off the streets.”
Trump, who described San Francisco as a “mess” days earlier, said in a Truth Social post that Lurie had helped convince him to call off the troops, but believed the mayor was making a mistake.
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“I told him … we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the law does not permit him to remove,” the post said.
A Chronicle analysis of federal prosecution data, however, shows that since Trump took office, federal officials have significantly dialed back an initiative that targeted some of San Francisco’s most high-priority criminal offenders and fast-tracked the deportations of those convicted.
Federal drug cases filed in San Francisco dropped by an average of more than 50% per month in 2025 compared to recent years; the result of a slowdown of the federal-local partnership Lurie described in his remarks without mentioning by name.
That initiative was an operation forged under the Biden administration dubbed “All Hands on Deck.” The program directed the power of U.S. government against low-level dealers in San Francisco, where penalties for drug crimes are much stiffer in federal court compared to state court.
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All Hands on Deck was among a wave of 2023 crackdowns that took aim at drug hotbeds in the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods, where users and dealers often congregated by the dozens.
Crucial to the initiative was lowering the bar for the types of drug crimes that would be handled by San Francisco’s federal prosecutors, who had traditionally pursued cases against major players within the drug supply chain.
Federal prosecutors in San Francisco filed an average of seven drug-dealing cases a month so far in 2025; plummeting from the average 15 monthly cases filed between August 2023 — when All Hands on Deck was launched — and December 2024.
The San Francisco figures are a stark example of a broader trend. A recent Reuters investigation found that the rate of federal drug charges filed this year was lower than it had been in decades; a downturn that comes after the Trump administration diverted thousands of federal agents who investigate crimes to instead focus on civil immigration roundups.
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In San Francisco, this included agents with the DEA, FBI, ATF who had been working with local police on drug busts, according to federal law-enforcement sources familiar with the operations.
The Chronicle reached out to the local branches of FBI, ATF and DEA for comment on this story. Spokespeople for the FBI and DEA did not respond to questions about their agents’ reported shift to immigration enforcement, both citing the government shutdown. An automatic response from ATF stated that the agency’s spokesperson had been furloughed, also due to the shutdown.
With their attention directed at immigration enforcement, federal agents have privately feared that hard-won gains in cleaning up San Francisco streets will begin to backslide.
“There were huge discussions going, ‘hey, we need to focus on the threat, and not going out there chasing people for immigration enforcement operations,” said one federal law-enforcement official.
The Chronicle spoke to multiple current and federal officials on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly,in accordance with the Chronicle’s policies.
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Michelle Lo, a spokesperson for the U.S. District Attorney’s Office of Northern California, said the office wasn’t able to comment on the charging data reviewed by the Chronicle due to staffing shortages related to the federal government shutdown.
Lo said the office remained committed to the All Hands on Deck operation, which was introduced by San Francisco’s former top federal prosecutor, Ismail Ramsey. Trump fired Ramsey in February, and in May appointed Craig Missakian as his successor.
“Our work through this initiative has driven visible, positive changes,” Lo said in an emailed statement. “The partnership between federal and local law enforcement remains strong and a priority for this Office.”
When asked for comment from Lurie, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office directed the Chronicle to the mayor’s Oct. 23 remarks.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who has made drug cases one of her office’s top priorities, said the assistance by federal prosecutors provides a “critical deterrent” to drug dealing.
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“If a person goes to trial in federal court, they risk incarceration because the Federal bench takes this crime seriously,” a spokesperson for Jenkins’ office wrote in an emailed statement. “In contrast, in San Francisco state court … many judges do not treat drug dealing as a serious crime and the drug dealers therefore do not fear any significant consequence.”
Jenkins has met with Missakian once, on July 7, where they discussed the All Hands on Deck Partnership, the spokesperson said. No changes to the partnership were discussed.
San Francisco has long posted low rates of violent crimes, and in recent years all categories of crime have been falling to historically low numbers. But the scourge of fentanyl and the pandemic-era boom in the city’s open-air drug markets elevated what were traditionally treated as low-level street dealing offenses to one of the city’s most urgent priorities.
The operation established a partnership between local law enforcement and federal agencies including the FBI, DEA, ATF, aimed at maximizing the arrests of drug dealers and swiftly prosecuting them.
Previously, street-dealing suspects were mostly prosecuted in San Francisco courts, where the risk of lengthy prison sentences and deportation for undocumented immigrants is much lower than in federal court.
In a late 2023 interview, Ramsey said the operation was designed to address the devastation of fentanyl, and the unique challenges of San Francisco’s drug trafficking enterprise, which had evolved away from a traditional hierarchy.
“We have basically a decentralized system of individual dealers who are acting as independent contractors,” Ramsey said at the time. (They’re) “being supplied their drugs on a regular basis, and then they’re commuting to San Francisco to deal drugs and return to their suppliers and do it all over again.”
In San Francisco, where a large portion of those arrested in recent years for drug sales have been undocumented immigrants from Honduras, a federal conviction for drug dealing means near-certain removal from the U.S.
Deportation is a much rarer outcome of a conviction in San Francisco courts, where sanctuary policies prevent city officials from working with federal agents on immigration actions.
All Hands on Deck also fast-tracked prosecutions by offering low-level offenders plea deals that included no additional jail time, but three years of probation and stay-away orders from the Tenderloin. Undocumented immigrants who took this deal were immediately turned over to ICE for deportation proceedings.
Few things are more valuable in the Bay Area than real estate. In San Francisco, the median house price is now over $2 million. Last month, at least seven houses in the city sold for $1 million over the asking price, and buyers regularly offer to pay in cash or waive contingencies to stay competitive. Yet there is one thing that remains even more valuable than a house, and possibly more valuable than money itself: stock in Anthropic or OpenAI.
Last week, 160 Noe Street, an Edwardian home in San Francisco’s desirable Duboce Triangle neighborhood, was listed for sale at $2.9 million—or the equivalent amount in Anthropic or OpenAI shares, as based on those companies’ current valuations. Rachel Swann, the listing agent, says she was inspired to set these unusual terms after meeting several Anthropic employees at an open house for a different property. “These people have a lot of paper wealth, but they don’t always have the liquidity to do things they want,” Swann says. Some of these employees were expecting to come into as much as $50 million from their Anthropic shares, and wondered if they could use that as leverage to buy a house, according to Swann. “This kept coming up over and over again.”
Swann’s listing is unconventional, but not singular. In April, an investment banker named Storm Duncan offered to exchange his Mill Valley home and an adjacent parcel of land for Anthropic shares. And in May, Vijay Chattha, who owns an agency that does PR for tech companies, listed his Healdsburg home for $2.5 million, or $2 million in Anthropic stock. “I want to sell my house, and I want to invest in Anthropic,” Chattha says. “Why not combine the two?
Chattha’s house—a three bed, three bath with a pool and a bocce court in a part of Sonoma County that abuts some of the region’s most famous wineries—also comes with coveted short-term rental status, allowing the owner to list it on platforms like Airbnb. Only a handful of properties in Healdsburg come with that status, and only about a dozen come up for sale in a given year.
Chattha is offering a $500,000 discount to Anthropic employees because he believes the value of Anthropic shares will grow faster than any other investment, and his vacation home in wine country is the best bargaining chip he has to try to access them. “If you look at Anthropic’s growth last year, it’s insane,” he says, noting the $380 billion valuation the company claimed in February. “Now they’re raising at $965 billion. That’s three X in like three months.” He added that he was open to exchanging the house for shares in Anthropic, but not OpenAI, because he prefers using Anthropic’s products.
The real estate listings come at a time when investors are salivating at the record-high valuations of Anthropic and OpenAI, and even those considered wealthy by Bay Area standards are feeling FOMO about the affluence that could come from these companies’ debuts on the stock market. (On Monday, Anthropic submitted paperwork for its initial public offering; OpenAI is also reportedly preparing to file in the coming months.) Despite the unprecedented valuations of these companies, many people believe their stock prices will only go up, and that anyone who gets a piece now could win the jackpot.
People are clamoring to buy equity in OpenAI and Anthropic on the secondary market, leading to a frenzy of transactions that may or may not be legitimate. As a result, Anthropic updated its policy around “unauthorized Anthropic stock sales” this spring, which notes that “if someone purports to sell Anthropic shares without proper board approval, that transaction is invalid.” A spokesperson for Anthropic pointed back to this policy when asked about the possibility of exchanging company shares for real estate.
Welcome to our running tally of Election Night results. Or, as this is California, well beyond tonight, as results continue to trickle in.
The first batch of results should arrive at 8:45 p.m., with three more to follow tonight. The Department of Elections has the breakdown.
San Francisco is voting in three special elections, for District 2 and District 4 supervisors and for a Board of Education member. Both supervisor races are referendums on housing, especially District 2, while the main backdrop of the D4 race is all the hot feelings around the fate of the Sunset Dunes Park (nee Great Highway).
The winners of all three special races will have to compete again in November for their seats.
Keeping it local, SF is also voting on four ballot measures. Prop A is for a bond to pay for an emergency water-system. B is for term limits. C and D are dueling measures related to the “overpaid CEO” tax. (Links go to our reporting on each race or issue; or click here for our Election 2026 page.)
Vote local, think national: Which two candidates will advance to the November election to replace Nancy Pelosi?
Statewide races include the primaries for governor, education superintendent, lieutenant governor, and much more.
Polls close soon. If you haven’t voted yet, find your polling station here.
Tuesday, June 2, 5:40 p.m.
Two and a half hours until our polls close. Before we go down the local rabbit hole, a reminder that other states have primary action today: New Jersey, Iowa, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Montana.
Why does it take so long to get results in California? CalMatters has you covered on that story. We shouldn’t expect a call tonight on the governor’s race.
The last big election was November 5, 2024. (Remember?) Ten days later, there were still races to call in San Francisco.
So if you’re waiting for the pundits (and maybe even us) to tell you What It All Means, you might have to wait a while.
More from The Frisc…
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco voters to decide on dueling measures on Top Executive Pay Tax changes
San Francisco voters weighed in Tuesday on two competing measures that seek to change the Top Executive Pay Tax, with one of the measures also including a change to the Gross Receipts Tax.
Should both measures pass, the one with the most votes will take effect, according to the propositions’ legal text.
Currently, the measures state that most businesses with San Francisco gross receipts up to $5 million are exempt from the Gross Receipts Tax. And businesses that use more than half of their city payroll for in-house administrative and management services pay an Administrative Office Tax instead of a Gross Receipts Tax.
The Top Executive Pay Tax is a tax some large businesses pay if their highest-paid managerial employee earns more than 100 times the median pay of their San Francisco employees. Businesses that have city gross receipts up to $5 million and are not subject to the Administrative Office Tax are exempt.
Proposition C
Proposition C states it would increase the number of businesses that could be exempt from the Gross Receipts Tax and would stop any further increases to the “Top Executive Pay Tax” after a final rate bump.
The proposed measure says it would raise the Gross Receipts Tax exemption ceiling to $7.5 million. The $7.5 million ceiling would also apply to the Top Executive Pay Tax exemption.
As for changes to the Top Executive Pay Tax, Proposition C states it would implement the 2028 tax rate increase in 2027, but then stop any future increases.
Supporting Proposition C are Rodney Fong, CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and Chris Wright, senior vice president of Advance SF, an organization of companies, which includes Bank of America, OpenAI, Waymo, the SF Giants CEO and others.
Fong and Wright, in their argument for the measure, say giving businesses more tax breaks would help keep more employees on payroll and would give companies the ability to “contribute to city services in a predictable and balanced way.”
Critics of Proposition C, such as the San Francisco Tenants Union, slam the measure as “billionaire-backed” and argue it would kill the Top Executive Pay Tax and would hand out more tax breaks to businesses at a time when the city is in a budget deficit and faces cuts to essential services.
Proposition D
Proposition D also seeks to change the Top Executive Pay Tax, which is collected from some large businesses where the highest-paid managerial employee earns more than 100 times the median compensation paid to other employees.
If approved, the measure would change the calculation of the tax using the compensation of all employees, not just employees based in San Francisco. Top Executive Pay Tax rates would also be increased for San Francisco gross receipts and payroll.
Supporters have billed the measure as a way to counteract federal cuts to Medicaid. A report by the City Controller’s Office said the measure could result in $250 million to $300 million in additional revenue.
“Proposition D is the solution to our budget deficit. It asks large corporations — not small businesses, not working families — to contribute a little more,” supporters said in the city’s official voter guide.
The measure has the backing of most of the Board of Supervisors, along with labor unions and Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
Opponents, including Mayor Daniel Lurie and state Sen. Scott Wiener, have argued Proposition D would negatively impact the city’s recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“San Francisco is already one of the most expensive cities in the country to live and do business. Adding extreme and unpredictable tax increases risks driving employers away just as we are trying to bring jobs, workers, and foot traffic back downtown,” said Supervisor Matt Dorsey in the city’s voter guide.
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