'We Don't Know What's Coming Next': SF Immigrant Communities Speak Out on Federal Policy Fears

Three generations of the same Salvadoran family have lived within four blocks of 24th Street in the Mission District. The grandmother arrived in 1987. Her daughter was born at San Francisco General Hospital. The granddaughter just finished second grade at Cesar Chavez Elementary. This July Fourth weekend, none of them feel like celebrating.

Across San Francisco's most immigrant-dense neighborhoods, community members and the organizations that serve them say the summer of 2026 has brought a particular kind of dread — not the sudden shock of a single policy announcement, but a slow, grinding uncertainty about what federal enforcement will look like after the most recent rounds of immigration rule changes out of Washington. The anxiety is palpable at community dinners, on WhatsApp group chats, and in the waiting rooms of legal aid offices.

"People are not going to the doctor. They are not enrolling their kids in summer programs. They are scared to be in public," said a caseworker at the Central American Resource Center, known as CARECEN SF, which operates out of offices on 24th Street and handles several hundred active immigration cases at any given time. CARECEN has seen walk-in inquiries jump roughly 40 percent since January, staff there said this week, straining a budget that runs on a combination of city contracts and private donations.

Neighborhood by Neighborhood

The Richmond District, home to one of the city's largest Chinese and Russian-speaking immigrant populations, tells a different version of the same story. At the Chinese Progressive Association on Kearny Street in Chinatown, organizers have been running "Know Your Rights" workshops every other Saturday since February. Turnout has averaged 60 to 80 people per session, roughly double what it was a year ago. Participants range from recent arrivals on work visas to people who have held green cards for a decade and still feel exposed.

Filipino community leaders in SoMa, centered around the Bayanihan Community Center on Howard Street, say their members — many of them healthcare workers and domestic workers — are particularly worried about changes to parole-in-place programs that have historically protected certain mixed-status families. A staff attorney there described spending most of June fielding calls from people asking whether their existing status documents would remain valid through the end of the year.

San Francisco's sanctuary city policy, codified in the city's Administrative Code Chapter 12H and 12I, prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration detainers in most circumstances. The City Attorney's office reaffirmed that posture in a memo issued in March 2026. That has provided some reassurance. It has not eliminated fear.

The Numbers Behind the Anxiety

The stakes are not abstract. According to the city's Office of Immigrant Affairs, roughly 35 percent of San Francisco residents are foreign-born — about 290,000 people. An estimated one in four of those residents lives in a mixed-status household. The office, which operates with a current annual budget of approximately $4.8 million, funds legal defense through programs including the Immigration Justice Initiative and provides emergency support grants capped at $1,500 per household.

Advocates say that funding does not come close to meeting demand. The Bar Association of San Francisco's Volunteer Legal Services Program reported in May that its immigration legal aid waitlist had grown to more than 1,200 names, up from roughly 700 at the start of 2025. Free consultations that once had a two-week turnaround now take six to eight weeks to schedule.

For families trying to make concrete decisions, community organizations are pointing people toward a few specific resources. The Office of Immigrant Affairs maintains a hotline at 415-581-2360. CARECEN, the Coalition for Immigrant Rights of the East Bay, and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic are all conducting screenings and referrals. Organizers are also urging people to complete any pending DACA renewal paperwork before the August application window closes, to avoid processing delays that left thousands unprotected in previous years.

The Mission grandmother told a volunteer at a community meeting last week that she has lived through harder times. She also said she has never before kept a bag packed near her front door. She keeps one now.