It was federal immigration agents He was greeted by protests Thursday In the San Francisco Bay Area on their way out to a century-old government-owned artificial island that houses a US Coast Guard base.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have begun arriving on Coast Guard Island to support federal efforts to track down immigrants in the country illegally. The Coast Guard is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, along with Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
“Through a whole-of-government approach, we are leveraging our unique authorities and capabilities to detect, deter, and intercept illegal aliens, narco-terrorists, and individuals intent on terrorism or other hostile activity before they reach our borders,” said a statement provided to the media by the Coast Guard.
Then President Donald Trump said Thursday he was backing off a planned surge of federal agents in San Francisco after speaking to the city’s mayor. It was not clear whether the president had canceled the National Guard deployment or canceled immigration enforcement by Customs and Border Protection agents.
Coast Guard Island is a 67-acre man-made island formed in 1913 in the mouth of the Oakland River between Oakland and Alameda. It is owned by the federal government, does not allow visits from the general public without an escort or specific government identification, and has been home to the current base, Base Alameda, since 2012, according to Coast Guard document from 2016.
Base Alameda provides a variety of services for Coast Guard activities throughout the West Coast.
The island came into being in part because of efforts to deal with Alameda’s drainage problems through a tidal canal proposed in 1873. By 1918, the island, built using clay reclaimed from dredging, was ready for habitation. Its first tenant was the San Francisco Shipbuilding Company, which built two ships before closing in 1921.
The state Supreme Court granted the island to the city of Alameda in 1926. The federal government acquired all of the land by 1948.
The Coast Guard first came to the island in 1926 when it established a base there. The Coast Guard used the land for various purposes, including a training center established in the 1940s that closed in 1982. That year, the Coast Guard established the Alameda Support Center and the island was renamed Coast Guard Island.
Eventually, in February 2012, the Coast Guard established Base Alameda on the island, combining several existing operations to create sections of the base.
According to a 2016 Coast Guard document, Coast Guard Island employs more than 1,200 people during the workday, including active-duty military personnel, Coast Guard Reserves, civilians, contractors, and occasional auxiliary Guard members.
The island is about 1.25 miles in circumference.
The base is the home port for four so-called national security cutters — ships that are 418 feet long, 54 feet wide, have a top speed of more than 28 knots, a range of up to 12,000 nautical miles, an endurance of up to 90 days, and the ability to accommodate a crew of up to 170, according to the Coast Guard.
One recently returned from an Arctic deployment of more than 21,000 nautical miles.