California’s new sanctuary-state law has made Laventure’s job more complex, but for many public-safety officials in the state, their frustration is about more than the cumbersome rules. The law, they say, is putting people at risk.

Growing opposition to the law is challenging California’s identity as the heart of liberal resistance to the Trump administration. Protests from conservative residents and politicians are emerging in courthouses and council meetings from here in the Bay Area to San Diego County…

In recent weeks, more than a dozen small cities and three counties in California have joined the Trump administration’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the sanctuary-state law. There is a sense among conservatives facing a difficult midterm election season that California has become “a rogue state,” in the words of a San Diego County supervisor who voted to join the federal lawsuit last month.

“Bringing up immigration is a way of mobilizing moderate, traditional Republicans here without bringing up Trump, who is not particularly popular,” said Louis DeSipio, a political-science professor at the University of California at Irvine. “At the grass-roots level, there may be opposition to this law and fear. But at the elite level, the elected political level, there is a strategic aspect to introducing immigration into the conversation now.”