DHS claims these tattoos present Venezuelan gang membership. The tattoo artists who did them clarify the reality is much more harmless | EUROtoday

In its sweeping deportation marketing campaign in opposition to Venezuelan immigrants, the Trump administration has repeatedly relied on tattoos to find out whether or not somebody is a member of the dreaded legal syndicate Tren de Aragua.

But The Independent has discovered that the U.S. authorities’s examples of TDA tattoos, created below the Biden administration, embrace artwork by artists within the UK and India, who say the tattoos they etched had harmless meanings. One honored the delivery of a kid, whereas one other seems to commemorate the Aussie rock band AC/DC.

“It is mind-blowing that this is being used as an example of gang tattoos. It makes no sense at all,” the British artist whose clock tattoo seems in a 2024 Department of Homeland Security briefing on “detecting and identifying” TDA members instructed The Independent. “I have no relationship to Venezuelan gangs, and my art has nothing to do with them.”

Other examples utilized by DHS may be present in on-line posts relationship again as much as 11 years, suggesting that they had been acquired just by looking the web for tattoos of assorted matters, together with crowns, trains, stars, clocks, and the phrases “Hijos de Dios” (that means “sons of God”), or “HJ” for brief.

“Yes, this tattoo was done by me,” mentioned 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 person who got this tattoo is my friend, and he lives in Gujarat.”

The briefing is one in every of eight U.S. authorities paperwork, obtained by the transparency group Property of the People by way of public data requests and shared with The Independent, which reference tattoos as a means for regulation enforcement officers to identify potential members or associates of TDA.

Largely compiled below Biden, these paperwork have now taken on new weight due to Trump’s use of 18th-century wartime powers to deport lots of of alleged TDA members with little to no due course of — following a take care of El Salvador’s president to carry them in a notoriously harsh mega-prison.

Among these deported to date 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.

“Well, you’re here because of your tattoos,” an ICE agent allegedly instructed Borges. “We’re finding and questioning everyone who has tattoos.”

Court papers shared by the ACLU recommend that DHS is utilizing an “Alien Enemies Act Validation Guide” to resolve who may be deported, assigning completely different level values to varied traits together with tattoos.

It’s unclear whether or not these paperwork performed any position within the present deportations. But they’re among the solely public proof out there of what sort of tattoos DHS considers “indicative” of somebody “possibly being a member or associate of TDA”.

“I can’t say whether these particular documents were in the hands of particular agents at particular moments. What I can say is these documents have been circulated widely among law enforcement, and that the clear, intended purpose of these documents is to be instructional for law enforcement in identifying supposed TDA members,” mentioned Ryan Shapiro, government director of Property of the People.

Experts say that TDA, like most Venezuelan gangs, doesn’t use tattoos to sign membership, and a number of other paperwork seen by The Independent clearly warn officers to not rely solely on tattoos.

“It’s an idea that has been taken from Central America… and has been incorrectly applied to Tren de Aragua,” Rebecca Hanson, a University of Florida professor who research violence and policing in Venezuela, instructed The Independent.

And whereas among the instance images of tattoos function precise Venezuelan nationals detained on the U.S. border, others have extra obscure origins.

‘It looks 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 done in England on someone that is of caucasian ethnicity,” mentioned the artist, who requested to stay nameless. “It was to represent the birth of his child and love.”

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 “total misrepresentation” of the tattoo’s that means, saying: “To me it honestly looks like they have just pulled random images off Google or Pinterest… I’m not happy that it’s been used within some document about this issue.”

The Independent has confirmed that the person who bought 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.

Chaudhary mentioned he has identified the tattoo’s proprietor for about two or three years, and that moderately than that means “Hijos de Dios”, the letters are merely household initials. “My friend’s name’s first letter and his wife’s names’ first letter. That’s all,” he told The Independent.

Meanwhile, one of the examples of a train tattoo DHS provides was actually inked in 2019 by Revival Tattoos in the historic English seaside resort of Blackpool, according to a post on Pinterest.

Revival did not respond to requests for comment, but the photo offers a clear clue to the tattoo’s true meaning: the logo of Australian rock band AC/DC, who performed in front of a giant model train during their 2008-10 world tour.

The other three train examples included in the documents were all featured in a 2015 article on the men’s lifestyle site Next Luxury, entitled ‘70 Train Tattoo Ideas for Men’.

DHS’s example of a crown tattoo appears to have come from a Spanish-language tattoo ideas blog, while one of its “Real hasta la muerta” examples came from the TikTok page of a Colombian tattoo artist — who indicated that it was actually quoting the debut album of widely popular Puerto Rican reggaeton artist Anuel AA.

The photos’ provenance was first spotted by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigrant non-profit, UK-based political consultant Arieh Kovler, and Bluesky user @itsTyGrey. The documents themselves were first reported by USA Today.

A spokesperson for DHS did not respond to questions from The Independent.

Hundreds deported with minimal due process

The documents seen by The Independent predate Trump’s recent declaration of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, spanning July 2023 to January 2025. They bear the marks of various government agencies such as DHS, the FBI, and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Although some documents are based purely on photos and details of named Venezuelan nationals whom agents suspected of TDA links, several incorporate internet material with no apparent connection to the gang.

In one briefing from the Homeland Security Investigations’s Chicago Field Division, whose serial number suggests it was created in 2024, eight out of the nine reference photos appear to have come from innocuous online posts.

“Open source material has depicted TDA members with a combination of the below tattoos,” it reads (see Exhibit 2 here), under the heading “DETECTING AND IDENTIFYING”.

Most of the documents offer little detail about how agents decided certain designs were linked to TDA. The exception is a DHS summary of an interview with Venezuelan asylum seeker who claimed to have been a high-ranking police officer in his home country, and who described tattoos as “the easiest but least effective way” to spot TDA members.

“The documents make plain what should have already been obvious: The use of tattoos to justify these deportations is a ploy to disguise nativism and cruelty as a national security imperative,” said Shapiro from Property of the People.

On DHS’s “Alien Enemies” scorecard, tattoos linked to gang membership is worth four points, while clothing such as “high-end streetwear” or Michael Jordan gear counts for another four. That is despite some of the documents explicitly warning that these alone are not proof of TDA membership.

ICE only needs eight points, according to the guide, to determine whether a suspect is a “validated member” of Tren de Aragua and can be summarily deported.

The ACLU has accused DHS of wrongly deporting people with no opportunity to challenge the claims against them, and multiple judges have ordered such deportations be halted. Officials have admitted that at least one of the prisoners was deported in error.

“That they are placing so much weight on common tattoos and hand gestures is inconsistent with what experts say are reliable methods of determining TDA membership,” ACLU’s lead counsel on the case Lee Gelernt told The Independent.

When The Independent questioned White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt about these criteria on Monday, she did not dispute the document but said DHS considers a “litany of criteria that they use to ensure that these individuals qualify as foreign terrorists.”

Then she turned her fire on our reporter. “Shame on you and disgrace on the mainstream media for making an attempt to cowl [for] these people,” she mentioned.

Additional reporting by Alex Woodward.