Sacramento has done it again. California just passed a new law that puts fresh requirements on federal immigration officers making arrests near courthouses, and the practical effect is simple: the state wants to make it harder for ICE to do its job at the one place criminal aliens reliably show up.

The Orange County Register has the details on the bill, which imposes new conditions on how and where federal officers can take custody of illegal aliens in and around courthouse grounds.

I spent 26 years in the Border Patrol and I'll tell you what every agent knows: courthouses are the best appointment an enforcement officer could ask for. The target is there, the location is known, and the schedule is public. An illegal alien with a court date will show up on time more often than the attorneys will. It's the safest arrest environment there is, for the agent and for the alien. Nobody is climbing a fence or running through a wash. You walk up, you identify yourself, and it's done.

California has been fighting that logic for years. First the sanctuary laws that barred cooperation between local agencies and ICE. Then courthouse arrests became the workaround, because when a county jail won't honor a detainer, the courthouse is the next box on the checklist. Now the state is going after the workaround too.

The new law stacks requirements onto federal officers working near courthouses. That means paperwork, notice provisions, restrictions on where an arrest can physically happen, all of it designed to slow the process down. Every hour of delay is an hour for a target to get word and vanish. Sacramento knows that. That's the point.

What the enforcement side of me keeps coming back to is the gap this fills. A detainer is a request, not a warrant. A 287(g) agreement lets local officers do immigration work, but only where a sheriff is willing to sign one. Courthouse arrests filled the space left by jurisdictions that release criminal aliens back onto the street instead of handing them over. Take away that tool, and the arrests don't stop. They move to parking lots, bus stops, and home addresses, which is more work, more risk, and fewer clean outcomes for everybody involved. The geniuses writing these bills never think past the press conference.

The feds aren't helpless here. Immigration enforcement is a federal function, full stop, and Washington has sued California over these fights before and won pieces of them. Expect another legal challenge, and expect the law to be tied up in court while agents adapt on the ground. That's been the pattern since 2017: state passes a wall, federal lawyers start chipping, agents route around it in the meantime.

What I'll be watching is the count. Courthouse arrests were a real slice of ICE's California numbers, and when a state squeezes one method, the total either dips or the arrests shift to uglier venues. The data will tell us within a quarter. It always does.

My prediction: ICE keeps its numbers up, California holds a press conference claiming victory, and criminal aliens in the state get arrested at bus stops instead of at the metal detector. Great work all around.

Scoreboard for now: California Legislature 1, common sense 0. There's a lot of season left.