Trump Just Outmaneuvered Newsom on ICE Detention, and California Has No Move Left

Federal ownership changes everything. The state can’t regulate what it doesn’t own. The local governments can’t pressure landlords who don’t exist. The activists can’t threaten CoreCivic’s contracts when CoreCivic no longer owns the property. Every legal and political lever California Democrats spent years building to obstruct ICE just got pulled out of their hands in a single transaction.

The DHS spokesperson said it plainly: unlike in Florida and Oklahoma, ICE cannot rely on California’s sanctuary politicians for detention space. So instead of begging for cooperation that was never coming, the administration used funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill to buy permanent capacity that Sacramento cannot touch.

The hypocrisy exposed along the way is worth savoring. In Fresno, an assistant U.S. attorney named Rob Fuentes spent months publicly attacking ICE at city council campaign events — while quietly filing legal briefs defending the federal government in at least 124 immigration cases. When his double life became public, he resigned before he could be fired and claimed Trump “pushed him out.” It’s the perfect snapshot of California’s anti-ICE politics: performative outrage on the outside, quiet compliance on the inside, and zero accountability for either.