Mayor Daniel Lurie has vowed to keep all San Franciscans safe as federal immigration arrests surge in the city, but his proposed budget puts services for some of the most threatened communities on the chopping block.
As city officials negotiate over the next few weeks on how to close a $782 million deficit, nonprofit leaders, immigrant advocates, and at least one supervisor are sounding the alarm on what they say is a stall or rollback in funding during a time of profound fear in immigrant communities. And this could be just the beginning.
In one notable example, Lurie’s proposed budget would slash $250,000 from the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs in 2026-27. The cut would amount to almost 7% of the office’s current $3.7 million budget.
The mayor’s office also intends to significantly scale back contracts for nonprofits, some of which assist immigrant families with legal support, food and housing, and other efforts.
“I’m disappointed these cuts are on the table,” Supervisor Jackie Fielder told The Standard. “I’m going to work with my colleagues this year and next to restore as many of them as we can.”
Pinning down all the city departments that provide services to immigrant communities is a challenge due to the complexity of San Francisco’s $15.9 billion budget. Some agencies and divisions, such as the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, play a direct role. Others, like the public defender’s office, have special allocations to represent immigrant clients.
The mayor’s office defended Lurie’s budget in an email Thursday, noting that funding for the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs dropped from $5.2 million to $3.7 million under former Mayor London Breed. Officials added that Lurie’s budget maintains steady funding for immigrant legal programs amid the fiscal crisis, while other city-funded programs faced cuts due to the budget crunch.
“We protect our people by building trust, not fear,” Lurie told a crowd at an immigration rally Thursday on the steps of City Hall. “I’m going to continue protecting legal services for our immigrant communities.”
Budget documents show the public defender asked Lurie to increase funding to its Immigration Defense Unit but the office was rebuffed. Its seven attorneys and six-member support staff handle 1,200 cases annually, according to Francisco Ugarte, the unit’s manager.
“Currently, as immigration enforcement increases, the community needs our help,” Ugarte said in a statement. “We are proud of the work we do and believe that the city’s investment in our unit will significantly pay off in defending due process and helping people and their families reestablish legal status in our communities.”
Lurie’s budget also cuts funding to nonprofits with larger missions that include providing food, shelter, and legal assistance to immigrant families.
At a hearing Wednesday, Alejandra Cuestas-Jaimes, a director at La Raza Centro Legal, said thousands of immigrant workers depend on her nonprofit’s services, but its funding is expected to diminish over the next two years.
Lurie’s budget slashed $85,000 from Centro Legal — which represents immigrant workers, many of whom are victims of wage theft — in the coming year, accounting for roughly half of this program’s funding. All of the funding will be eliminated the following year.
“If you cut that budget, the work of 20 years of our collaborative will be destroyed, and all the immigrant workers will be without a voice to represent them in front of state, local, and federal authorities,” Cuestas-Jaimes told the Board of Supervisors.
Laura Valdéz, executive director of Mission Action, had a call with Lurie last week in which she asked him to reconsider adding resources for the San Francisco Immigrant Legal & Education Network and the San Francisco Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative, which partner on the city’s Rapid Response Network.
“We are completely under-resourced to respond effectively,” Valdéz told The Standard.
Gabriel Medina, executive director of La Raza Community Resource Center, was one of several nonprofit leaders who told The Standard that, unlike other Bay Area counties, San Francisco has not increased funding for immigrant services in years. The static funding caused difficulties during Joe Biden’s presidency, Medina noted, but the dramatic escalation of raids and arrests under Donald Trump has created a dire emergency.
“In a time of crisis, we’re really concerned on how they’re expecting us to respond without city funding,” Medina said. “The mayor will say they’re trying to leverage foundations, but the city’s budget looks like it’s fallen flat.”
In February, the Board of Supervisors passed legislation that created an exception for certain elected officials and top staff in the mayor’s office to solicit donations from private sources to deal with expected threats from the Trump administration. These funds could be used for “legal services related to the creation and enforcement of immigration laws,” as well as protecting the environment and defending reproductive rights and the LGBTQ+ community.
In one example, City Attorney David Chiu, who is leading the birthright citizenship lawsuit against the Trump administration, solicited $400,000 for the Public Rights Project to fund civil rights litigation. Chiu has filed six lawsuits in total, and the city has won preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders at the district court level in all of the cases, according to the city attorney’s office. But these efforts are focused on large-scale fights with the Trump administration, rather than helping immigrant communities with day-to-day survival.
Joaquín Torres, San Francisco’s assessor-recorder, said the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement is “seemingly indiscriminate,” as women and children are being “disappeared” in arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. He added that he is waiting for the budget to be finalized, but some funding will be backfilled as he and other city officials seek out behested payments.
“Once we see where the need exists, we can move as a many-tiered body to reach out to philanthropic organizations to help fill any gaps or augment services where it’s needed,” Torres said. “I think it’s a little too early to make a final determination until we move through questions being answered in this budget process.”
City Administrator Carmen Chu, who oversees the budget for the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, said at Wednesday’s hearing that as a daughter of immigrants, it is hard to stomach reports of ICE agents going after families in San Francisco.
“I look at my girls every day, and I cannot imagine the pain it would cause to be away from them,” Chu said. She proposed pushing back some cuts by a year so the city can work to identify money for the future. “When it’s Year 2, we have another shot at the budget, right?”