Sawt Falasteen - Families say tattoos landed Venezuelan migrants in Salvadoran mega-jail

Jhon Chacin, a professional tattoo artist, has images of "a flower, a watch, an owl, skulls" and family members' names etched onto his skin.

Last October, the 35-year-old was arrested at the Mexican border for entering the United States illegally.

Then last weekend, after not hearing from him for several days, shocked family members spotted him in a video of shaved and chained prisoners at a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

He was one of 238 men declared as a member of Venezuela's Tren de Aragua -- a terrorist group under US law -- and deported by US President Donald Trump.

"He doesn't have a criminal record, he'd never been arrested," Chacin's sister Yuliana, who lives in Texas, told AFP.

She is convinced her brother was designated a gang member because of his body art.

At the US detention center, before being deported, "ICE (immigration) agents told him he belonged to a criminal gang because he had a lot of tattoos."

In the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, family members of several other deportees denied their loved ones were criminals.

Twenty-three-year-old Edwuar Hernandez Herrera, known to family and friends as Edward, left Venezuela in 2023.

He made a fraught journey across the jungle-filled Darien Gap before reaching the United States, where he was detained.

He has four tattoos -- his mother and daughter's names, an owl on his forearm and ears of corn on his chest, according to his mother Yarelis Herrera.

"These tattoos do not make him a criminal," she told AFP.

Herrera's friend Ringo Rincon, 39, has nine tattoos, including a watch showing the times his son and daughters were born, said his wife Roslyany Camano.

- Due process -

US authorities have provided little public evidence to support claims that all the deportees were members of Tren de Aragua (TdA).

In a court filing, a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official admitted "many" of the expelled men had no criminal records, because "they have only been in the United States for a short period of time."

But Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin cited tattoos as evidence against 36-year-old professional soccer player Jerce Reyes Barrios.

"He has tattoos that are consistent with those indicating TdA gang membership. His own social media indicates he is a member of the vicious TdA gang," McLaughlin wrote on X.

She insisted US intelligence assessments "go beyond a single tattoo."

Reyes Barrios's lawyer, Linette Tobin, believes he was accused of gang membership for his tattoo of a crown atop a soccer ball -- a variant on the logo of Real Madrid, his favorite team.

In a letter posted on social media, Tobin said her client had sought asylum in the United States after being tortured for taking part in anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela.

- 'Strong vetting process' -

In September 2024, Texas authorities published a report listing tattoos it said were characteristic of Tren de Aragua membership, including crowns, stars and weapons.

Yet Ronna Risquez, author of a book about Tren de Aragua, said tattoos are not known to be a signifier of gang allegiance in Venezuela -- unlike heavily tattooed members of El Salvador's Mara Salvatrucha.

Trump, who has previously linked tattoos with gang violence, on Friday insisted the men were a "bad group."

"I was told that they went through a very strong vetting process, and that that will also be continuing in El Salvador," he said.

But if anyone was misidentified "we would certainly want to find out" Trump added. "We don't want to make that kind of mistake."

Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said Thursday the government had hired a law firm in El Salvador to try and secure the migrants' release.

Some eight million Venezuelans are estimated to have fled the country's economic meltdown and increasingly authoritarian rule in the past decade.

An estimated 770,000 Venezuelans live in the United States -- many under a protected status granted to citizens of dangerous countries, which Trump recently revoked.

F.AbuZaid--SF-PST