When the Trump administration essentially disappeared 238 Venezuelan men (and potentially women) living in the United States to a prison in El Salvador earlier this month, it alleged they were members of a Venezuelan gang. Administration officials declared with certainty that these men belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, boasting on social media alongside dehumanizing propaganda from Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president. Trump administration officials argued that the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the legal authority they invoked to pull this stunt, allowed them to remove these men from the country without being required to substantiate their accusations before any court of law.
While these brazen acts face ongoing legal challenges in the federal courts, the stories illuminating the innocence of many of these men are piling up. There’s the Venezuelan LGBTQ makeup artist with no criminal record but a set of aesthetic tattoos used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as pretext for his alleged gang membership, according to his lawyer. She was prepared to mount a case with overwhelming evidence that he has no such ties, but she never got the chance before the administration disappeared her client. And there is the professional soccer player who fled his home to seek safety in the United States after being detained and tortured by the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. According to his lawyer, he also has no criminal record, and his tattoo is of a soccer logo. Both men and several others claim their full innocence and apparently have proof to show it.
What makes matters worse: experts say that tattoos aren’t even a symbol of membership in Tren De Aragua.
Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act as a basis for these unjust removals is unprecedented, but it is by no means unprecedented for the U.S. government to use sham gang allegations to detain and deport men from Central and South America who pose no public safety risk. In fact, there is a long history of immigration agencies using tattoos and a set of notoriously flawed gang databases to bring false or weak claims of gang involvement. As shocking as it is to watch possibly innocent people dramatically flown to a notoriously horrific prison in El Salvador, we probably wouldn’t be seeing this intensity of thuggish government conduct emerge so quickly under the second Trump administration if unsubstantiated gang allegations hadn’t been tacitly tolerated for years across prior administrations, Democratic and Republican both.
Read the rest at Just Security…
FILED UNDER: El Salvador
