In the early days of the first Trump administration, immigration agents arrested Daniel Ramirez Medina at his family’s apartment in a suburb of Seattle and accused him of being a gang member. Their evidence was a tattoo on his left forearm of a five-point star that read, “La Paz — BCS.”
Born in Mexico and raised in California, Mr. Ramirez had been able to work and raise his son without fear of deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Even so, he spent six weeks in a detention center, as the government tried to deport him. A judge eventually ruled that the tattoo was a reference to his birthplace and ordered him released.
This time around, the second Trump administration appears to be relying more heavily on tattoos to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants that it says are members of the gang Tren de Aragua, in a move that some critics argue ignores decades of police and legal protocol.
Tattoos are often just a starting point in an investigation, many law enforcement officials say. And Tren de Aragua is still relatively new in the United States, so any indicators of affiliation might be less reliable than what law enforcement has gathered over the years about other more longstanding street gangs.
What role do tattoos play in police investigations?
In February of last year, the New York Police Department began to receive reports from federal authorities about members of Tren de Aragua traveling from Denver and Colorado toward the East Coast.
The Police Department had little information on the Venezuelan gang, which was new in the country and in New York City. But one indicator, the police learned, were the tattoos that members bore to show their allegiance.
Among them were images of clocks to denote how long they had spent behind bars, and insignia related to the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan, whose jersey number was 23 — a reference to 23 de Enero, a neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela.
Then there were images of trains, which in Spanish is trenes, paying homage to the gang’s name.
But for decades, law enforcement officials have treated tattoos only as an indication of possible gang affiliation, said Joseph Kenny, chief of detectives of the Police Department. A tattoo itself, he said in an interview last year, is never sufficient evidence to prove a person is a member of a criminal group, and neither should a tattoo ever be the sole basis for bringing criminal charges.
Officials have identified 78 members of Tren de Aragua and Los Diablos, an affiliated youth gang, according to the Police Department’s most recent data — among 13,304 known gang members in New York City.
“We have very strict criteria” to enter any person’s name in the department’s so-called gang database, Chief Kenny said at a news conference last week, “and we stick to that very strict criteria.”
The information that the police collect is passed to other parts of the criminal justice system, including jails and prisons, where correction officers do their own investigatory work.
“It’s the correctional officer’s duty to observe and listen and hear the lingo and observe the tattoos,” said Leandro Paulino, a former correction officer at Rikers Island in New York.
The jails then rely on their own confidential informants, said Mr. Paulino, who is the president of the International Law Enforcement Officers Association, an advocacy group with expertise on gang intelligence.
“They’re the ones telling us, ‘No you’ve got that wrong,’” he said. “This is how we do it. That is how you gather intel.”
How much do prosecutors rely on tattoos during trials?
When they are presented in court, tattoos are commonly used to establish relationships between defendants to prove the charges against them. Judges often allow prosecutors to present photographs of tattoos to a jury if the images are relevant to some aspect of a crime, whether it be drug trafficking, a drive-by shooting or extortion.
“Tattoos are just one element of a myriad of circumstances law enforcement uses to identify who is in a gang, and what position they are in a gang, and how long and what their actual affiliation is,” said Ryan Brackley, the assistant district attorney of Arapahoe County in Colorado.
Mr. Brackley, whose jurisdiction includes Aurora, the city that President Trump falsely claimed had been overrun by gang members from Venezuela, added: “A tattoo can be very telling. But are we going to base our decisions and law enforcement accusations and associations on a tattoo? Very, very unlikely.”
John Colello, supervisor of the gang homicide division in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, said that information from more longstanding gangs was more reliable. Members of Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, have “MS” tattoos, for example; 98 Main Street Mafia Crips have “98 M” tattoos, he said.
Even though some gangs, such as MS-13, have tattoos that might make them more easily identifiable to law enforcement, members still get the marks to signal to the community and other rival members which group they represent.
But five Venezuelan experts on Tren de Aragua — two police officials, two academics and a journalist — said that was not the case with the Venezuelan gang. While some members have tattoos, they are not meant to be markers of membership. Tattoos are also prominent among many young Venezuelan men, they said, particularly those from poorer neighborhoods where hip-hop and basketball are a strong part of the culture and aesthetic.
“Facts and context are obviously important,” Mr. Colello said. “Tattoos alone, or lack of tattoo, do not necessarily mean a person is, or is not, a gang member or an active gang member.”
How has the Trump administration changed the playbook?
In an effort to expel more migrants from the country, the second Trump administration appears to have lowered the bar on identifying people as gang members. During a hearing last month, lawyers for the Venezuelan migrants produced a government document titled, “Alien Enemy Validation Guide,” which laid out criteria that federal law enforcement officials must follow to designate someone a member of Tren de Aragua.
Such identification was based on a 10-point scoring system. A person who had “tattoos denoting membership/loyalty to TDA” could receive four points, the document said. Another four points could be assigned for “insignia, logos, notations, drawings, or dress known to indicate allegiance to TDA.”
Eight points would designate a person as a member of Tren de Aragua, the document said, and as readily deportable under the Alien Enemies Act without a chance to challenge the government in court.
In one recent case, Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, a Venezuelan makeup artist, was deported to El Salvador after the government appeared to rely solely on tattoos to accuse him of being a member of Tren de Aragua. Lawyers for Mr. Hernandez Romero have said that he has two crown tattoos, one with the word “Mom” and the other “Dad.” But they argue that there is no actual evidence tying him to the group.
A Supreme Court ruling last week could clear a path for further litigation over this process. All nine justices agreed that detainees were entitled to a hearing before the government could deport them, and that the Trump administration must give them time to contest their removals. But the administration has already shown its willingness to defy court orders, and a federal judge threatened on Wednesday to open a high-stakes contempt investigation into deportation flights.
Bill O. Hing, a law professor at the University of San Francisco and an immigration attorney for a half-century, said that the government’s targeting of people based on tattoos alone was too simplistic.
“It is possible that some gang members have a particular insignia,” Mr. Hing said, “and it’s possible that somebody who has that tattoo is not in the gang. So that’s why it’s overinclusive to make such a generalization.”
As immigration enforcement efforts ramp up across the country, Mr. Bing is seeing caseloads increase and expects they will continue doing so.
“There’s an uptick in pressure for legal representation,” Mr. Bing said, “because ICE is busy.”
Reporting was contributed by Julie Turkewitz from Bogotá, Colombia, and Sheyla Urdaneta from Maracaibo, Venezuela.
Tim Arango is a correspondent covering national news. He is based in Los Angeles.
Chelsia Rose Marcius is a criminal justice reporter for The Times, covering the New York Police Department.
Jesus Jiménez is a Times reporter covering Southern California.
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