When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Venezuelan makeup artist Andry Hernandez Romero in 2024, it suspected he belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang. Yet ICE provided no “official records, media reports, and correspondence,” “intelligence information received from other agencies,” or “validation” or “confirmation” by “law enforcement, Corrections, or sending jurisdiction,” to prove that Hernandez Romero was tied to the gang.
Instead, ICE officials flagged Hernandez Romero as a potential Tren de Aragua associate based on two of his tattoos: the words mom and dad, topped with crowns, on each wrist.
“The crown has been found to be an identifier for a Tren de Aragua gang member,” noted ICE officials. The tattoos seem to be why Hernandez Romero was one of over 200 Venezuelans sent to a brutal Salvadoran prison on March 15. The Trump administration claimed they all had connections to Tren de Aragua, but some of the deportees’ lawyers have questioned how the government reached that conclusion, blaming misinterpretations of their clients’ tattoos for their imprisonment.
The Trump administration invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in March to target Tren de Aragua, a group it claims has “perpetrated irregular warfare within” the United States. It relied on that law to conduct immediate deportations of over 100 people it deemed members of the gang, denying them due process, and evidently relying on shaky subjective criteria to decide whether someone should be deported.
A March court filing by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed a document that the government is allegedly using “to determine whether Venezuelan noncitizens are members of Tren de Aragua and subject to summary removal under the Alien Enemies Act.” The document notes that migrants who score eight points or higher on the checklist “are validated as members” of the gang and thus subject to arrest and removal. “Tattoos denoting membership/loyalty” to the gang is worth four points. Other listed identifiers include displaying certain logos, making certain hand signs, or wearing certain clothing.
When The Independent‘s Andrew Feinberg asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt about the document, she said it’s “not true” that tattoos and clothing alone could get someone classified as a Tren de Aragua member. “According to this document, it is,” Feinberg countered. “Have you talked to the agents who have been putting their lives on the line to detain these foreign terrorists?” Leavitt shot back. “There is a litany of criteria that they use to ensure that these individuals qualify as foreign terrorists…..Shame on you and shame on the mainstream media for trying to cover for these individuals.”
Attorneys for some of the men sent to El Salvador have argued that American immigration officials misinterpreted their clients’ tattoos before their deportation. One claimed that her client, Jerce Reyes Barrios, was accused of being a Tren de Aragua member in part because of his tattoo paying homage to the Real Madrid soccer team. Another argued that immigration officials flagged his client as having “gang-related tattoos,” noting that his client’s tattoos are of a rose, a clock, and a crown with his son’s name. One attorney claimed that ICE falsely accused his client of gang membership because of a crown tattoo—”a tribute to his grandmother whose date of death appears at the base of the crown.”
It would be bad enough for the government to rely so heavily on such tenuous evidence in normal deportation proceedings. But the March removals to El Salvador weren’t normal. Conducted under the Alien Enemies Act, they denied migrants the opportunity to appear before an immigration judge. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than what has happened here,” charged D.C. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett. “They had hearing boards before they were removed.”
Even if Hernandez Romero posed a genuine risk to public safety or had demonstrable gang ties, he deserves a right to defend himself. But he “did not have the opportunity to contest the evidence submitted against him before he was forcibly removed,” said his attorney, Paulina Reyes, in her sworn declaration to the court. If he and the other men singled out for their tattoos were truly safety risks and Tren de Aragua associates, then the government should have been willing and able to prove that in court. The shadowy, fast-tracked removal process the government adopted instead makes it all the more likely that it deported innocent people.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline “Deported for Tattoos?.”
