Trump backs off deployment: After a reported buildup of federal agents on Coast Guard Island, President Donald Trump called off plans to send them to San Francisco. That didn’t stop confrontations between protesters and federal agents Thursday morning. Demonstrations continued in the evening around the Bay Area in San Jose and San Francisco, and security personnel opened fire on a truck at the Oakland protest site. ••• More: Check out photos of the protests. Meanwhile, South Bay leaders have proposed “ICE-free zones” modeled after Chicago’s efforts. Report finds antisemitism in Oakland schools: The California Department of Education determined that the school district discriminated against Jewish students. The filing found the Oakland Unified School District excluded Israel from a map and failed to comply with complaint procedures
Agents clash with Bay Area protesters even as federal threat loses steam
Trump says Bay Area operation will be postponed after he told SF mayor ‘Let’s see how you do’
Demonstrators confront federal agents as they try to block the entrance to Coast Guard Island in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
OAKLAND — Clashes between masked federal agents and protesters heralded the arrival Thursday of a Customs and Border Protection squad to the East Bay, sending ripples of fear throughout the Bay Area’s immigrant community and visibly countering President Donald Trump’s claims of an aborted anti-migrant “surge.”
Protesters early Thursday flooded the roadway along the lone entrance to the Coast Guard’s installation on the Oakland Estuary, where more than 100 federal agents were expected to arrive as part of the next phase of Trump’s immigration-enforcement campaign. They were met by agents in Border Patrol bulletproof vests, who fired a chemical agent at near-point blank range toward at least one protester, and pushed people aside with their vehicles to get onto the military isle.
“These are people who are here just trying to make a life, and this external invasion of ICE officers is not something that we want, and we would like them to leave,” said one of the marchers, the Rev. Laura Cheifetz.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said Trump’s move came after he had a phone call with the president late Wednesday night. Trump said he’d “give him a chance” to turn around San Francisco, adding he thought Lurie was “making a mistake,” and that the nation should “stay tuned.”
It was not immediately clear if that shift in direction applied only to San Francisco, or to the rest of the Bay Area as well.
Jorge Bautista of Oakland, center, representing College Heights and the Presbyterian Church of San Francisco, is assisted by fellow demonstrators after being struck and pepper-sprayed in the face by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent after demonstrators blocked the entrance to Coast Guard Island in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Messages from this news outlet Thursday to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — as well as the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees those agencies — were not immediately returned.
Outside the Coast Guard’s base, word of Trump’s announcement was read aloud to the crowd by someone carrying a microphone. Yet few people trusted the president’s words.
“I don’t believe that for a second,” said Dan March, who attended the demonstration with his wife. Nearby, a friend echoed his concerns — claiming Trump was “playing with people’s lives.”
“They’re here already,” said the friend, Lindsey Swanson, who arrived at the protest at 7 a.m. “Even if hypothetically he’s telling the truth that he isn’t going to send them anymore, they’re already here.”
Earlier in the morning, protesters called the arriving federal agents “Nazis,” and confronted their vehicles as agents and drivers physically pushed protesters while they made their way onto the base.
“Get out the way, because once we go, we’re not stopping,” one masked agent told protesters before a vehicle started moving slowly through the crowd. “I’m telling you now, this is a warning. We’re not stopping.”
California Highway Patrol officers in riot gear push away a protester during a demonstration at the entrance to U.S. Coast Guard Island, after dozens of federal agents, including personnel from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), entered the island earlier in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
It was not immediately clear who was in those vehicles or where they were headed. Watching the vehicles stream by, a protester wept as she attempted to keep her place on the street.
“I feel a lot of rage and fear for my community,” said the woman, Charlie Pain. “The hope isn’t gone. Nothing they do can take my hope away. Tomorrow is another day.”At the protest, Cheifetz voiced concern that the influx of Border Patrol agents would force immigrants into hiding — making once-bustling community hubs go silent as at-risk families shelter from authorities. She feared that students would miss school, adults would avoid running errands and families would avoid their places of worship.
“All of this reminds me of this hysteria that is politically convenient for a few, and is devastating for generations to come,” said Cheifetz, a transitional executive presbyter with the Presbytery of San Francisco.
Cheifetz, whose own Japanese American family was confined during WWII, called the pending immigration crackdown “infuriating, not only as a religious leader but as a human.”
Not all at the demonstration on Thursday were opposed to ICE or the current federal administration. Andrew, who declined to give his last name said he voted for Donald Trump and said he believes in the rule of law; he came to the protest from the boat he calls home, anchored near Coast Guard Island.
Andrew said he knows people whose legal status is in question, and said he was hopeful they would not be detained. But, he added, if it happens, it would be a consequence of their own actions.
“I hate to say it, but even if you do come over here and your only crime is being illegal because you came illegally, at some point, you got to pay the piper for that. There’s got to be some type of a consequence,” Andrew said.
Fears of a heightened immigration crackdown rippled throughout the Bay Area on Thursday, even as it remained unclear what may happen next.
