Mutual and Reinforcing Noncompliance
For decades, Democrats in California intentionally created a system to attract an immigrant voting base, even tolerating blatant flouting of federal immigration law. It's irredeemably corrupt, with approximately half the American population at any one time tolerant of it, as they obviously believe themselves beneficiaries of the corrupt system. Changing the law would be one thing, but in fact it appears the illegality of certain would-be immigrants is a feature to some of a corrupt elite, who have gone further and recruited a credulous populace to help fortify this system of exception into an industry. Blatant defections against the agreed order - which should be the lawful order! - are likely to incur further defections, which increase uncertainty and cause a breakdown of the social fabric.
Recently, the state of Missouri passed a law "invalidating" all federal gun control laws, and prohibiting state and local cooperation of enforcement of said federal laws. Sound familiar? It is the same exact strategy practiced by California Democrats to wriggle out of their immigration enforcement duties. You see, it's not that the state of California is stopping the federal enforcement of immigration law - they're just not helping. Very different. But as we are, this dubious principle is not being given up, so it only makes sense for Republicans to use it to leverage in favor of their own interests. The Missouri in its current form may be struck down in part or whole, but if Republicans in Missouri have any self-respect they will stick tenaciously to the latter element of the law, which prohibits state and local cooperation. The only way for the federal government to undo such state level policies would be to enforce some new law or new interpretation of an old law, which in being applied to dissolve the Republican gun law in Missouri could be used to dissolve the Democrat stranglehold over California.
What seems more likely than the Missouri or California "normalization of exception" policies being struck down are that both remain in place, and in fact much more normalization of exception takes place. One case inspires two, two inspires three, and three inspires a crowd.