Federal immigration brokers had been greeted by protests Thursday within the San Francisco Bay Space on their means out to a century-old, government-owned synthetic island that homes a U.S. Coast Guard base.

U.S. Customs and Border Safety brokers started arriving at Coast Guard Island to help federal efforts to trace down immigrants within the nation illegally. The Coast Guard is a part of the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety, together with Customs and Border Safety, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

An announcement offered to the information media by the Coast Guard stated that “by way of an entire of presidency strategy, we’re leveraging our distinctive authorities and capabilities to detect, deter, and interdict unlawful aliens, narco-terrorists, and people intent on terrorism or different hostile exercise earlier than they attain our border.”

President Donald Trump then stated Thursday that he’s backing off a deliberate surge of federal brokers into San Francisco after chatting with the mayor. It was not clear if the president was canceling a Nationwide Guard deployment or calling off immigration enforcement by CBP brokers.

Coast Guard Island is a 67-acre human-made island shaped in 1913 within the Oakland Estuary between Oakland and Alameda. It’s federally owned, doesn’t permit visits from most of the people with out an escort or particular authorities identification, and it has been dwelling to the present base, Base Alameda, since 2012, based on a Coast Guard doc from 2016.

Base Alameda offers a wide range of providers for Coast Guard actions all through the West Coast.

The island got here to be partly due to an effort to cope with sanitation issues in Alameda by way of an 1873 proposed tidal canal. By 1918, the island that was constructed utilizing reclaimed mud from dredging was able to be occupied. Its first tenant was the San Francisco Shipbuilding Firm, which made two ships earlier than closing in 1921.

The state Supreme Courtroom awarded the island to the town of Alameda in 1926. The federal authorities acquired every tract of land by 1948.

The Coast Guard first got here to the island in 1926 when it established a base there. The Coast Guard used the land for varied functions, together with a coaching middle arrange within the Forties and closed in 1982. That 12 months, the Coast Guard established Assist Heart Alameda and the island was renamed Coast Guard Island.

Finally, in February 2012, the Coast Guard arrange Base Alameda on the island, combining a number of current operations to arrange departments within the base.

In response to the 2016 Coast Guard doc, Coast Guard Island employs greater than 1,200 individuals through the workday, together with energetic obligation navy, Coast Guard Reserve, civilians, contractors and occasional Guard Auxiliary personnel.

The island has a fringe of about 1.25 miles.

The bottom is the house port for 4 so-called nationwide safety cutters — ships which might be 418 ft lengthy, 54 ft huge, with a high velocity over 28 knots, a variety of 12,000 nautical miles, endurance as much as 90 days, and capability for a crew of as much as 170, based on the Coast Guard.

Considered one of them only in the near past returned from an Arctic deployment of greater than 21,000 nautical miles.