In its sweeping deportation marketing campaign towards Venezuelan immigrants, the Trump administration has repeatedly relied on tattoos to find out whether or not somebody is a member of the scary prison syndicate Tren de Aragua.
However The Unbiased has discovered that the U.S. authorities’s examples of TDA tattoos, created beneath the Biden administration, embrace artwork by artists within the UK and India, who say the tattoos they etched had innocent meanings. One honored the beginning of a kid, whereas one other seems to commemorate the Aussie rock band AC/DC.
“It’s mind-blowing that that is getting used for instance of gang tattoos. It is mindless in any respect,” the British artist whose clock tattoo seems in a 2024 Division of Homeland Safety briefing on “detecting and figuring out” TDA members informed The Unbiased. “I’ve no relationship to Venezuelan gangs, and my artwork has nothing to do with them.”
Different examples utilized by DHS might be present in on-line posts courting again as much as 11 years, suggesting that they had been acquired just by looking out the web for tattoos of varied subjects, together with crowns, trains, stars, clocks, and the phrases “Hijos de Dios” (which means “sons of God”), or “HJ” for brief.
Homeland Safety Investigations claims tattoos, pictures of which had been sourced from the web and tattoo artists’ social media profiles, counsel Tren de Aragua membership (Homeland Safety Investigations)
“Sure, this tattoo was performed by me,” stated Vipul Chaudhary, a tattooist in Gujarat, India whose picture posted on Pinterest in 2021 seems to be the unique model of DHS’s “HJ” instance.
“The one that acquired this tattoo is my good friend, and he lives in Gujarat.”
The briefing is certainly one of eight U.S. authorities paperwork, obtained by the transparency group Property of the People through public information requests and shared with The Unbiased, which reference tattoos as a method for legislation enforcement officers to identify potential members or associates of TDA.
Largely compiled beneath Biden, these paperwork have now taken on new weight because of Trump’s use of 18th-century wartime powers to deport hundreds of alleged TDA members with little to no due course of — following a cope with El Salvador’s president to carry them in a notoriously harsh mega-prison.
Amongst these deported up to now are Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, a homosexual make-up artist who has repeatedly denied any affiliation with TDA, and Neri Alvarado Borges, who has an autism consciousness tattoo in honor of his brother.
“Nicely, you’re right here due to your tattoos,” an ICE agent allegedly told Borges. “We’re discovering and questioning everybody who has tattoos.”
Alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua just lately deported by the U.S. authorities are being imprisoned within the Terrorism Confinement Heart (CECOT) (Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia/Handout through REUTERS)
Court papers shared by the ACLU counsel that DHS is utilizing an “Alien Enemies Act Validation Information” to determine who might be deported, assigning totally different level values to numerous traits together with tattoos.
It’s unclear whether or not these paperwork performed any position within the present deportations. However they’re among the solely public proof out there of what sort of tattoos DHS considers “indicative” of somebody “probably being a member or affiliate of TDA”.
“I am unable to say whether or not these explicit paperwork had been within the fingers of explicit brokers at explicit moments. What I can say is these paperwork have been circulated broadly amongst legislation enforcement, and that the clear, meant goal of those paperwork is to be tutorial for legislation enforcement in figuring out supposed TDA members,” stated Ryan Shapiro, govt director of Property of the Individuals.
Experts say that TDA, like most Venezuelan gangs, doesn’t use tattoos to sign membership, and several other paperwork seen by The Unbiased clearly warn officers to not rely solely on tattoos.
Three of the 4 prepare tattoos from the federal government paperwork first appeared on a life-style weblog providing prepare tattoo concepts for males (DHS)
“It’s an concept that has been taken from Central America… and has been incorrectly utilized to Tren de Aragua,” Rebecca Hanson, a College of Florida professor who research violence and policing in Venezuela, informed The Unbiased.
And whereas among the instance images of tattoos characteristic precise Venezuelan nationals detained on the U.S. border, others have extra obscure origins.
‘It seems to be like they’ve simply pulled random pictures off Google’
Take the elaborately detailed arm tattoo of a pocket watch and dove, which comes from the Instagram web page of a tattoo artist in Nottingham, England. In DHS’s model, somebody has manually eliminated the artist’s watermark.
“The tattoo was performed in England on somebody that’s of caucasian ethnicity,” stated the artist, who requested to stay nameless. “It was to symbolize the beginning of his baby and love.”
Within the DHS paperwork, a screenshot of a clock matches a tattoo posted on Instagram by a British tattoo artist (DHS)
In DHS’s briefing the tattoo is blurred, however on the artist’s Instagram web page it clearly features a date throughout the clock face.
The artist referred to as the DHS doc linking it to TDA membership as a “complete misrepresentation” of the tattoo’s which means, saying: “To me it actually seems to be like they’ve simply pulled random pictures off Google or Pinterest… I’m not glad that it’s been used inside some doc about this subject.”
The Unbiased has confirmed that the person who acquired the tattoo lives within the UK, however is withholding his id out of respect for his privateness.
Or take the “HJ” tattoo inked in India by Vipul Chaudhary, which seems cropped and stretched within the DHS briefing.
The ‘HJ’ tattoo that Vipul Chaudhary says he inked for his good friend in Gujarat, India (Vipul Chaudhary through Pinterest)
Chaudhary stated he has identified the tattoo’s proprietor for about two or three years, and that fairly than which means “Hijos de Dios”, the letters are merely household initials. “My good friend’s identify’s first letter and his spouse’s names’ first letter. That is all,” he informed The Unbiased.
In the meantime, one of many examples of a prepare tattoo DHS offers was truly inked in 2019 by Revival Tattoos within the historic English seaside resort of Blackpool, according to a post on Pinterest.
Revival didn’t reply to requests for remark, however the photograph presents a transparent clue to the tattoo’s true which means: the brand of Australian rock band AC/DC, who carried out in entrance of a giant model train throughout their 2008-10 world tour.
Upon nearer inspector, the brand for the band AC/DC is clearly visibly throughout the facet of the prepare (DHS)
The opposite three prepare examples included within the paperwork had been all featured in a 2015 article on the lads’s way of life web site Subsequent Luxurious, entitled ‘70 Practice Tattoo Concepts for Males’.
DHS’s instance of a crown tattoo seems to have come from a Spanish-language tattoo concepts weblog, whereas certainly one of its “Actual hasta la muerta” examples got here from the TikTok web page of a Colombian tattoo artist — who indicated that it was truly quoting the debut album of widely popular Puerto Rican reggaeton artist Anuel AA.
The images’ provenance was first noticed by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigrant non-profit, UK-based political marketing consultant Arieh Kovler, and Bluesky consumer @itsTyGrey. The paperwork themselves had been first reported by USA Today.
A spokesperson for DHS didn’t reply to questions from The Unbiased.
Actual hasta la muerte can also be the identify of a preferred Reggaeton album (DHS)
Lots of deported with minimal due course of
The paperwork seen by The Unbiased predate Trump’s latest declaration of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, spanning July 2023 to January 2025. They bear the marks of varied authorities businesses akin to DHS, the FBI, and the Texas Division of Public Security.
Though some paperwork are primarily based purely on images and particulars of named Venezuelan nationals whom brokers suspected of TDA hyperlinks, a number of incorporate web materials with no obvious connection to the gang.
In a single briefing from the Homeland Safety Investigations’s Chicago Area Division, whose serial quantity suggests it was created in 2024, eight out of the 9 reference images seem to have come from innocuous on-line posts.
“Open supply materials has depicted TDA members with a mix of the beneath tattoos,” it reads (see Exhibit 2 here), beneath the heading “DETECTING AND IDENTIFYING”.
Many of the paperwork provide little element about how brokers determined sure designs had been linked to TDA. The exception is a DHS abstract of an interview with Venezuelan asylum seeker who claimed to have been a high-ranking police officer in his dwelling nation, and who described tattoos as “the best however least efficient method” to identify TDA members.
“The paperwork make plain what ought to have already been apparent: The usage of tattoos to justify these deportations is a ploy to disguise nativism and cruelty as a nationwide safety crucial,” stated Shapiro from Property of the Individuals.
On DHS’s “Alien Enemies” scorecard, tattoos linked to gang membership is value 4 factors, whereas clothes akin to “high-end streetwear” or Michael Jordan gear counts for an additional 4. That’s regardless of among the paperwork explicitly warning that these alone usually are not proof of TDA membership.
ICE solely wants eight factors, in keeping with the information, to find out whether or not a suspect is a “validated member” of Tren de Aragua and might be summarily deported.
The ACLU has accused DHS of wrongly deporting folks with no alternative to problem the claims towards them, and multiple judges have ordered such deportations be halted. Officers have admitted that not less than one of many prisoners was deported in error.
“That they’re inserting a lot weight on widespread tattoos and hand gestures is inconsistent with what consultants say are dependable strategies of figuring out TDA membership,” ACLU’s lead counsel on the case Lee Gelernt informed The Unbiased.
When The Unbiased questioned White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt about these standards on Monday, she didn’t dispute the doc however stated DHS considers a “litany of standards that they use to make sure that these people qualify as international terrorists.”
Then she turned her fire on our reporter. “Disgrace on you and disgrace on the mainstream media for making an attempt to cowl [for] these people,” she stated.
Extra reporting by Alex Woodward.
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