Washington, DC — Los Angeles is seeing calm as the mayor has ended the curfew while President Donald Trump is struggling to maintain control of California troops deployed to the city where raids on immigrants have intensified.

California officials have accused Trump of adding fuel to the fire by sending 4,000 of the state's National Guard troops — as well as 700 Marines — to the second-largest American city.

Trump disregarded the objections of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who would typically oversee the troops.

A judge deemed the Republican president's actions "illegal", but a higher court paused this after an appeal, citing an "intrusion" on presidential authority.

Against this backdrop, TRT World spoke with Doug Rand, a former senior advisor to director of (US Citizenship and Immigration Services), to assess whether Trump's policies risk fracturing the US immigration system.

"I think that the Trump administration is pursuing a very indiscriminate deportation policy where they've told enforcement officers to meet certain arrest numbers on a daily basis and to cast the widest possible net," Rand tells TRT World.

Unlike previous administrations that prioritised public safety, "they're going after anybody who is here without permission, even if they're a grandmother or a high school student or an agricultural worker."

Rand believes this approach is fuelling the largely peaceful protests in Los Angeles, saying, "That's what's triggering the mostly peaceful protests in Los Angeles."

Legal residents and US citizens not spared

The climate of fear is not confined to undocumented immigrants, Rand warns.

"It's not just undocumented immigrants, it's immigrants who have temporary visas, it's even lawful permanent residents, it's US citizens married to immigrants… lawful permanent residents getting picked up… people showing up for their legal immigration interviews, and suddenly finding themselves being arrested by immigration enforcement."

He adds: "This is an intentional effort to create fear and a sense of not being welcome for a large population of people who were not born here, and not just those who are undocumented."

On the scale of ICE raids, Rand notes, "the scale is the same as it's always been, because there's only so many ICE officers… In the prior administration, the official policy was, go after undocumented immigrants who have a criminal record… And in the current administration, they've thrown that out the window and said, go after the easiest person you can find."

Targets now include "low-hanging fruit" — individuals found in schools, churches, or courtrooms.

Rand is blunt about the implications for civil liberties.

"This administration does not respect people's due process rights."

He cites examples of Salvadorans deported without hearings, adding that "the administration is arguing that that's within their rights, which as a matter of law and precedent, that's ludicrous."

Rand also highlights ICE tactics of transferring detainees across state lines to face "more favourable judges." 

Travel ban: Extending old patterns under new pretexts

When asked whether the Trump administration's new travel ban can be legally justified, Rand responded bluntly: "Well, the US Congress does give presidents expansive power to deny entry to foreign nationals. However, these bans aren't allowed to be arbitrary and it's unconstitutional to discriminate based on race or religion."

Rand argues that the latest ban is simply an extension of the administration's earlier Muslim ban, now masked by broader justifications.

"It's pretty clear that this new entry ban is both arbitrary and discriminatory. The administration was hunting for any data to justify expanding the Muslim ban — not just to Muslim countries like Afghanistan, but also to countries they've long demonised, such as Cuba and Haiti."

To support the ban, officials introduced an arbitrary metric — overstay rate — which allowed them to target certain nations while ignoring others.

"They established this arbitrary metric called overstay rate, which allows them to justify extending the travel ban to those countries, but then also randomly sweeps in 10 small countries like Chad, Turkmenistan, and Togo that seem random, but are really just swept up in this pretextual metric," says Rand.

But he notes that the true overstay problem lies elsewhere.

"You want to know which countries have a large number of people who have come here and overstayed their visas? Spain — 20,000 people. UK — 15,000 people. France — 9,000 people. It's a lot of European countries."

He concludes sharply:

"That's all nonsense. If you actually cared about overstays, you wouldn't be targeting Chad or Togo — countries with tiny numbers of actual overstays. The choice of targets makes clear the discriminatory intent."

Retreating to exclusionary ideology

Reflecting on the broader direction of US immigration policy, Rand laments: "The last time Congress updated our immigration laws… was in 1990… It's a self-inflicted wound."

He contends that the Trump administration's current agenda mirrors the nativist 1924 Immigration Act, saying, "They're clearly trying to approximate that — shutting down asylum, slashing refugee admissions, reducing student visas, and banning family-based immigration from 19 countries."

Rand concludes grimly: "We're only seeing the beginning of what may be a very concerted effort to reduce immigration from certain countries, not including Europe, based on a deeply troubling history."