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When the Trump administration essentially disappeared, 238 Venezuelan men (and potentially women) lived in Salvador prisons in the United States earlier this month, claiming they were members of a Venezuelan gang. Executives declared with confidence that these men belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, boasting on social media alongside the dehumanised propaganda of El Salvador’s President Naive Buquere. Trump administration officials argued that the alien enemy law of 1798, the legal authority they called to draw this stunt, allowed these men to be taken from the country without having to demonstrate their charges before court.
These brave acts face ongoing legal challenges in federal courts, but stories that uncover the innocence of many of these men are piled up. According to lawyers, the Venezuelan LGBTQ makeup artist with no criminal history has a set of aesthetic tattoos that the US Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) used as an excuse for his gang membership allegations. She was ready to set up the case with overwhelming evidence that he had no such bond, but she never got a chance before the administration disappeared his client. And then there is a professional footballer who fled his home to seek safety in the United States after being detained and tortured by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government. According to his lawyers, he has no criminal history and his tattoo is a soccer logo. Both the man and several others seem to have evidence to assert their complete innocence and demonstrate it.
Worse, experts say that tattoos aren’t even a symbol of Tren de Aragua’s membership.
While it is unprecedented for Trump’s alien enemy to act as a basis for these unfair removals, it is by no means unprecedented for the US government to use fake allegations to detain and expel men from Central and South America that do not pose a public safety risk. In fact, there is a long history of immigration institutions using tattoos and a set of infamous, flawed gang databases to bring about false or weak claims of gang involvement. It’s shocking to see people who could be flying dramatically into the infamous, horrifying prisons in El Salvador, but if unfounded gang allegations have been unconditionally tolerated in both past administrations, democratic and republics for years, we wouldn’t see the strength of this intense government act emerged so quickly under the Second Trump administration.
Read the rest in Just Security…Submitted: El Salvador
