Lawyers representing Venezuelan migrants who are being held in immigration custody, or who have already been deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador for alleged gang affiliation, say their clients may have been targeted for innocuous tattoos depicting roses, crowns, and other symbols.
Last weekend, on March 15, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) — a law enacted in 1789 under President John Adams that allows the president to deport and detain immigrants during a “declared war” — in order to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to one of El Salvador’s most notorious prisons accused of human rights abuses.
Several lawyers for detained and deported migrants say their clients were erroneously profiled as members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, labeled by Trump as a “foreign terrorist organization” alongside the Salvadorian Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), on the basis of their tattoos.
According to some law enforcement agencies, body art depicting stars, crowns, trains, roses, and felines are “identifiers” of Tren de Aragua. However, lawyers and experts have said that Venezuelan gang members are not identified by their tattoos, unlike members of MS-13, whose tattoos sometimes signify affiliation.
In one court filing from March 15 reviewed by Hyperallergic, lawyers for a Venezuelan asylum applicant said their client, identified by his initials J.G.G., was detained while meeting ICE immigration officials as part of his petition for asylum. During the interview, J.G.G. — who is a professional tattoo artist — said under the penalty of perjury in a court declaration that he was questioned by ICE officers about his rose, eye, and skull tattoo on his leg.
J.G.G told a federal judge he got the tattoos to cover up a previous monkey tattoo he no longer wanted, and that he has never been a member of the notorious Venezuelan gang nor “convicted of any crime anywhere in the world.”
“The sole reason ICE claims I am a Tren de Aragua member is because of my tattoos,” J.G.G. said in his declaration.
The Venezuelan tattoo artist, who was living in Pittsburg, California, prior to his detention, said that he feared being returned to his home country because he had previously been detained, tortured, and beaten by Venezuelan police because of his political opinions and association with a relative who is a known dissident.
The Trump administration reportedly failed to obey a judge’s order to turn around planes carrying the migrants removed under the AEA. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the last president to use the Wartime Act, labeling Japanese, Italian, and German Americans “aliens” in 1941 during World War II.
According to court filings, the Trump administration said many of the migrants had no criminal records in the United States, but added that ICE used “investigative techniques” to “ensure” the migrants were members of the gang.
“ICE did not simply rely on social media posts, photographs of the alien displaying gang-related hand gestures, or tattoos alone,” ICE Acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Robert Cerna said in a court document, per ABC News.
Lawyer Austin Thierry told ABC News that he believed his client, another Venezuelan migrant, was targeted by ICE due to his crown tattoo.
“This crown is not related to Tren de Aragua, but rather a tribute to his grandmother whose date of death appears at the base of the crown,” Thierry said.
