America deported 238 Venezuelan males on three flights to El Salvador on March 15, 2025, claiming that they had been members of the Tren de Aragua gang that originated in Venezuela.
Immigration officers have stated that tattoos weren’t the only real standards used when deciding whom to deport; nonetheless, a authorities doc confirmed that officers relied on tattoos and clothes to find out gang membership.
A lawyer for Jerce Reyes Barrios, an expert soccer participant who’s among the many Venezuelans deported to El Salvador, says the federal government detained and deported her consumer as a result of he has a tattoo of a soccer ball with a crown on high, which resembles the brand of his favourite soccer crew, Actual Madrid. The tattoo and {a photograph} of Barrios making a hand signal which means “I love you” in signal language are the one two items of proof the federal government has introduced of his gang ties, based on the lawyer.
In the meantime, deported Venezuelan make-up artist Andry José Hernández Romero has a tattoo of a crown on every wrist, one with “Dad” and one with “Mom” written subsequent to every crown. Immigration authorities indicated in his file that these tattoos had been “determining factors to conclude reasonable suspicion” of his membership within the Tren de Aragua gang. Some authorities sources listing crowns as a tattoo frequent for Tren de Aragua members, however different authorities sources forged doubt on that declare.
The tattoos on the wrists of Andry José Hernández Romero, who says he was wrongly recognized as a gang member by the Trump administration.
David Alandete/X
Whether or not or not the Trump administration used tattoos as a sole standards for deportation, I’ve present in my very own analysis that merely utilizing tattoos as any kind of standards can lead regulation enforcement astray.
In 2023, I analyzed the reliability of tattoos as markers of gang membership within the Washington Legislation Overview.
The underside line: Whereas many individuals in gangs have tattoos that reveal their membership, many individuals who’ve completely no gang ties additionally get comparable tattoos.
Counting on them to find out gang membership has led to systematically misidentifying folks as gang members – notably as tattoos have turn out to be extra in style.
There are some sorts of tattoos that may be particularly deceptive.
Geographic origins
In 2017, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Daniel Ramirez Medina, who was lawfully in the USA underneath the Deferred Motion for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The federal government tried to strip his standing and deport him, claiming he was a gang member as a consequence of a tattoo that learn “La Paz BCS.” La Paz is the capital of the Mexican state Baja California Sur, which is abbreviated “BCS.” The one proof of gang membership that ICE brokers introduced in immigration court docket was this tattoo.
However they neglected the truth that tattoos depicting the names or space codes of hometowns or international locations of origin are a standard method for folks to honor the place they got here from.
That is notably the case for individuals who migrate or transfer away from their homelands. For instance, tattoos of “503” and “504” – the nation codes used to dial El Salvador and Honduras, respectively – have been relied upon to allege gang membership, whilst many individuals who’ve these tattoos deny any gang ties and don’t have any prison information. Legislation enforcement has additionally relied on tattoos of the phrases “Mexican,” “Chicano” or “Brown Pride” as proof of gang membership.
Some gangs, such because the Mexican Mafia, embrace a reference to nationality within the title of the gang. And within the U.S., road gangs are sometimes based mostly in particular neighborhoods, with many gangs incorporating the town or road the place they’re based mostly into gang names and related tattoos. For that reason, tattoos celebrating a metropolis or nation can solely result in confusion.
Tattoos of Mayan or Aztec photographs have additionally been used to designate folks as gang members, despite the fact that these tattoos are clear expressions of cultural identification and don’t essentially have any nexus to gang membership. Whereas some gangs do use particular Aztec symbols to determine members, it’s just about unimaginable to differentiate a tattoo of cultural or geographic significance from a tattoo indicating gang affiliation.
Within the case of Medina, U.S. District Choose Ricardo S. Martinez, a George W. Bush appointee, ordered that his DACA standing stay in place and that he be shielded from deportation as a result of ICE’s “conclusory findings” that he was a gang member had been “contradicted by experts and other evidence.” Moreover, an immigration choose who reviewed all of the proof had already concluded that he was not in a gang.
Martinez was clearly disturbed by ICE’s claims, writing, “Most troubling to the Court is the continued assertion that Mr. Ramirez is gang-affiliated, despite providing no evidence specific to Mr. Ramirez to the Immigration Court in connection with his administrative proceedings, and offering no evidence to this Court to support its assertions four months later.”
Non secular imagery and popular culture
Tattoos of in style Catholic spiritual photographs, such because the Virgin of Guadalupe, praying palms and rosaries, have additionally been used to label folks as gang members, a transfer that may appear to be clearly overbroad.
Whereas some gang members could also be Catholic, nobody would even attempt to allege that every one Catholics are gang members. Not less than one of many deported Venezuelan males had a tattoo of a rosary, together with tattoos of a clock and the names of his mom and niece with crowns atop the textual content.
Tattoos have additionally turn out to be an necessary method for folks to rejoice in style tradition. Tattoos of a girl’s lips, for instance, have turn out to be in style amongst gang members and non-gang members alike. Quite a lot of skilled athletes, together with soccer phenom Lionel Messi, have tattoos of their companion’s lips. Nevertheless, that is additionally a tattoo regulation enforcement makes use of to categorize folks as gang members.
In keeping with the Texas Division of Public Security, tattoos of stars on shoulders, crowns, firearms, grenades, trains, cube, roses, tigers and jaguars are frequent amongst members of Tren de Aragua.
The difficulty, in fact, is that these symbols are additionally in style amongst folks with no connection to the gang.
Imprecise methodology
Understanding the issue actually comes all the way down to math. Whereas it might be true that many gang members have tattoos of the pictures listed above, it’s also true that many non-gang members have comparable tattoos.
The Bayesian mathematical strategy includes making inferences about possibilities based mostly on accessible data. The chance {that a} gang member has a sure tattoo isn’t the identical because the chance that a person who has a sure tattoo is a gang member.
The U.S. authorities appears to be wrongfully equating the 2.
Writing concerning the broader issues of discerning gang membership in 2009, sociologist David Kennedy argued that the regulation’s incapacity to plan guidelines “that clearly distinguish a gang and a football team, or a gang member and his mother” means that taking “legal action, based on imprecise language [is] something of a problem.”
This drawback turns into magnified when there’s no due course of for the accused – which is strictly what occurred to the Venezuelan males whisked off to El Salvador.
Some tattoos – like these MS-13 ones – denote gang membership extra clearly than others.
Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Pictures
