Hundreds of people have been deported to El Salvador’s mega-prison because of their tattoos. It’s not the first time tattoos have been weaponized against immigrants.
Nazish Dholakia, Vera Institute of Justice, Senior Writer
Tattoos and clothing—markers of appearance—are being used by the United States government to decide who gets to stay in the country and who is subject to indefinite imprisonment in a notorious prison in El Salvador.
On March 15, immigration officials summarily deported 238 Venezuelan citizens to El Salvador, where they are now being held in the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), a mega-prison rife with cruelty and abuse where, according to one official, “the only way out is in a coffin.” The government alleges that many of the men deported are members of Tren de Aragua (TdA), a Venezuelan gang. The evidence? Many of the men have innocuous tattoos—tributes to family and soccer—that officials argue signify gang membership.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities claim that the men’s tattoos were not the determining factor in their deportation. However, a government document shows that officials assumed they were criminals and gang members precisely because of their tattoos and clothing.
Jerce Reyes Barrios, a former professional soccer player who was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in September 2024, is among the men deported. He has a tattoo of a crown over a soccer ball, in honor of his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid. This, along with a photo of him making a hand gesture that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims is a gang symbol, is the only “evidence” against him. The hand gesture, Reyes Barrios explained, is sign language for “I love you.”
Johanny Sánchez, whose husband Franco Caraballo was among the men deported, said she believes he was wrongly accused of belonging to TdA because he has a clock-shaped tattoo that marks his daughter’s birthday. Andry José Hernández Romero, a 31-year-old makeup artist, had been held in immigration detention since last August while his asylum claim worked its way through the system. His tattoos of a crown on each wrist, one with the word “Mom” and the other with the word “Dad,” were cited by the government as “determining factors to conclude reasonable suspicion” that he was a TdA member.
Frizgeralth de Jesus Cornejo Pulgar’s 20 or so tattoos include an angel holding a gun and the word “mom” on his chest. His family said officials repeatedly questioned him about his tattoos.
“I never imagined being imprisoned just for getting a tattoo,” Cornejo Pulgar wrote. Tellingly, the family and friends he entered the United States with in June 2024 were let through right away—Cornejo Pulgar alone was sent to an immigration detention center, first in Louisiana, then in Texas, until his deportation and imprisonment in El Salvador.
The government’s Alien Enemy Validation Guide, cited in court documents, outlines a scoring system that agents can use to “identify” TdA members—though supervisors retain some discretion. According to the document, people who score eight points or higher can be “validated as members of [TdA].” For example, officials can assign four points to someone who has “tattoos denoting membership/loyalty to [TdA]” and four points to someone who “displays insignia, logos, notations, drawings, or dress known to indicate allegiance to [TdA], as observed by law enforcement in person or via virtual mediums.” A flawed and arbitrary point system is being used to make decisions that are, quite literally, about life and death.
Not the first time
This is not the first time U.S. authorities have used tattoos to assert gang affiliation, which even government agencies have previously recognized as an unreliable practice. It is particularly ineffective in identifying members of TdA, which, unlike other gangs, does not require its members to get tattoos.
Tattoos that represent Latinx cultural and racial identity—ranging from Aztec and Mayan imagery to area codes honoring hometowns—are routinely conflated with gang membership in ways that are racially disparate. Tattoos have long been used to categorize Latinx people as gang members—a label that is disproportionately applied to them and almost never to white people, despite data that shows 40 percent of gang members in the United States are white.
In recent decades, people who would otherwise qualify for green cards or citizenship have increasingly been denied entry or deported simply because of their tattoos. In 2012, Hector Villalobos spent months separated from his wife and children; authorities suspected he was a gang member because of his tattoo of a pair of clown faces—a popular tattoo that authorities have routinely mischaracterized as demonstrating gang membership. At the time, one lawyer said authorities were “[bordering] dangerously on violating First Amendment freedom of speech and expression.”
Even drawings—quite literally doodles in notebooks—have been considered sufficient “evidence” to send Latinx high schoolers to ICE detention centers, hundreds or thousands of miles away from loved ones, for months.
In this context, the most recent deportations represent a deliberate and ever-heightening attack. Court documents show that DHS officials may also identify TdA members by their clothing—“high-end urban street wear” or even something as innocuous as a Chicago Bulls basketball jersey with Michael Jordan’s number, 23. These are inane grounds on which to assume gang membership. Here, again, the United States is criminalizing people based on ethnicity, nationality, and appearance, with authorities profiling people quite literally because of generic tattoos of clocks and crowns—common tattoos, especially among Venezuelans.
No day in court
In deporting the men to El Salvador and imprisoning them indefinitely in a notorious Salvadoran facility, immigration officials have also eroded due process. Enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, due process guarantees—rather, it should guarantee—everyone a chance to review and contest the evidence the government is using against them when their freedom is at risk.
As with the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda writ large, its claims that the people deported to CECOT are “criminal” migrants have not been supported by evidence presented in court or otherwise. People imprisoned in CECOT are blocked from access to legal representation and have had no opportunity to review the evidence against them or refute the accusations in court. In fact, those deported include men who followed all necessary procedures when seeking asylum. The deportees even include one man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who had protected legal status in the United States. The Trump administration has since admitted his deportation was an “administrative error.” Yet, despite an order from the Supreme Court that it facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return home, the administration has indicated that it has no intention of doing so.
“The reason we have courts and judges in this country is so they can look at the evidence and make a fair, independent determination,” Reyes Barrios’s attorney, Linette Tobin, told NPR. “Instead, DHS is making snap judgments with life-threatening consequences for these people, based on flimsy evidence that a judge has not been able to review or make a determination or an adjudication.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues its overt plans to aggressively deport people, demonizing them, denying them due process, and expanding the already vast web of discrimination and criminalization in this country. Most significantly, this has caused despair and anguish for families who only hoped for a better future.
