In 2018, California implemented the California Values Act, which gave special protection to illegal aliens by mandating that California law enforcement agencies cannot cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") thumbed its nose at California and arrested two people in Sonoma County Superior Court.

California has lots of reasons to hang onto its roughly 2.2–3.5 million illegal immigrants. They provide cheap, easily exploited labor. They swell the state's population, which matters for electors and congresspeople, as well as the distribution of certain federal funds. As illegal aliens are fed into the system, they provide reliable (legal or illegal) Democrat votes. And they make Californians feel virtuous even as they allow corrupt Latin American states to continue exploiting their own citizens and destroying their economies by relying on remittances from people illegally in America.

For these reasons, California enacted the pompously named "California Values Act." Although the act refers to "immigrants," it's obviously intended to affect only illegal aliens because the act's entire purpose is to use the agencies of the state to prevent ICE from gaining access to people illegally in California — including people who have committed crimes in California. This is the type of law that could only come from legislators and other virtue-signalers ensconced in comfortable middle- and upper-middle-class enclaves unaffected by felonies that would never have happened but for open borders and sanctuaries.

Throughout the Obama administration, sanctuary cities and states were able to get away with these policies because the Obama administration, despite Obama's sworn obligation to upload the laws of the United States, approved of open borders. Trump promised to change all that.

During the first three years of his administration, rather disappointingly, Trump was able to have little effect on illegal immigration or on deportation. However, Trump was just getting his ducks in a row. He was hampered by a reluctant Republican Congress, which was superseded by a violently resisting Democrat House. He also had to deal with "resistance" judges who blocked every immigration initiative he made.

Finally, things are changing. Trump was able to squeeze money out of Congress for his wall, and, even more importantly, with help from Mitch McConnell, he's changing the Judiciary:

Great news for the U.S. Constitution! @realDonaldTrump has flipped the 9th Circuit — and some new judges are causing a 'shock wave' https://t.co/WsdBQZsU9q — Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) February 22, 2020

With a Judiciary that believes in interpreting the law, not making it, Trump's administration is able to act in accordance with the Supremacy Clause (Constitution, Art. VI, Clause 2):

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

In other words, when there's a direct conflict between state laws and federal laws, federal laws prevail.

Because the critical mass of judges is no longer deliberately inserting itself as an obstacle between federal laws and illegal aliens, ICE is beginning to carry out its duty as written under the law:

U.S. immigration agents arrested two people at a Northern California courthouse, including a man detained in a hallway on his way to a hearing, flouting a new state law requiring a judicial warrant to make immigration arrests inside such facilities. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made the arrests Tuesday at Sonoma County Superior Court, prompting an outcry from criminal justice and court officials who said the action undermines local authority and deters immigrants who are in the country illegally from participating in the U.S. justice system. ICE said California's law doesn't supersede federal law and "will not govern the conduct of federal officers acting pursuant to duly-enacted laws passed by Congress that provide the authority to make administrative arrests of removable aliens inside the United States." "Our officers will not have their hands tied by sanctuary rules when enforcing immigration laws to remove criminal aliens from our communities," David Jennings, ICE's field office director in San Francisco, said in the statement.

At long last, in Trump's America, the rule of law matters again. The reliability of law is one of the essential ingredients of a just and successful civilization. In that context, if you don't like the law, you change it through the democratic process, not through illegal and unconstitutional resistance.