Stars, crowns, roses and watch tattoos can land you in prison if you are a Venezuelan man in the United States.

U.S. immigration agents have been flagging Venezuelans, especially men, for suspected ties to the feared Tren de Aragua gang based on tattoos, including animals, basketball symbols and reggaeton lyrics.

The Trump administration invoked a 227-year old wartime law last month to target Venezuelans, sending hundreds of alleged members of the gang to a mega prison in El Salvador. Federal court records show immigration agents are using a “validation guide” to decide whether Venezuelans may be suspected gang members. The guide includes “symbolism” among the things to consider, including hand signs, clothing, social media posts — and tattoos.

Although tattoos are being used as indicators of gang membership even when there is no other evidence that a person has a criminal past, experts on Tren de Aragua, which was born in a notorious Venezuelan prison, say that’s just not the way this particular gang operates — and that profiling people using tattoos is likely to lead to miscarriages of justice.

Sociologist Roberto Briceño León, who has been studying violence in Venezuela for 30 years, says the U.S. is misinterpreting the characteristics of members of Tren de Aragua, or TdA. While gangs such as El Salvador’s infamous MS-13 and Comando Vermelho in Brazil are known to compel their members to tattoo themselves as a sign of allegiance or pride, the practice is not common among Tren de Aragua members.

“Venezuelan gangs don’t identify themselves with tattoos,” he told the Miami Herald. Gang members’ identities, he said, “are rooted in other elements: the area where they live, the neighborhood where they came from, and the figure of a leader.”

In South America, where Tren de Aragua has had a years-long presence, especially in Chile, Peru, Colombia and Brazil, local police have never consistently linked tattoos to the gang, said Ronna Rísquez, a journalist who has tracked the gang’s activities for years.

“Having specific tattoos isn’t mandatory to be a member of TdA,” Rísquez said, nor a “determining factor” in whether someone belongs to the gang.

Rísquez, author of a book on Tren de Aragua, La banda que revolucionó el crimen organizado en América Latina — The gang that revolutionized organized crime in Latin America — argues that the U.S. treatment of Venezuelans with tattoos reflects a basic misconception: To the authorities all Latin Americans — and all Latin American gangs — are the same: “If every Latino is Mexican, every Latin American gang is like MS-13.”

Rísquez said that while it is true that some men who served time in the Tocorón prison in the Venezuelan state of Aragua — where the gang originated more than a decade ago before its closure in 2023 — had star tattoos on their shoulders, she said they don’t necessarily indicate membership in TdA.

Criminalization of Venezuelans

During his presidential campaign, Trump referred to the TdA gang as “savage,” saying, “The United States is now an occupied country, but on day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get these criminals out. I will rescue every city ... and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail. We’re going to kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.”

When Trump came into office, the administration classified Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. It later invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law last used during World War II, calling the presence of the gang in the U.S. an “invasion” deliberately sent to the U.S. by Venezuela’s socialist government.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has publicly referred to some Venezuelans as “dirtbags” and “the worst of the worst,” and moved to end deportation protections known as Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, a move now facing legal challenges in federal court.

Briceño León said the U.S. is overestimating the actual threat posed by TdA, adding that Mexican drug cartels “have a far greater level of intensity and power.”

The Trump administration has used the Alien Enemies Act to justify the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to the El Salvador prison without due process or any opportunity to show they are not gang members. On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the administration to continue deporting Venezuelans under the Act for the time being, but ruled that anyone facing deportation under that law must be given the opportunity to challenge it in federal court. However, on Wednesday, a federal judge blocked all deportations from the Southern District of Texas under the Act.

Targeting Venezuelans with tattoos as members of Tren de Aragua began at least in 2023, under the Biden administration, according to court records, when immigration agencies assumed that the Venezuelan gang was identifying itself through tattoos, despite the lack of evidence to support the notion.

Rísquez, who is currently investigating the presence of Tren de Aragua in the U.S., said that Washington needs to modify its approach to identifying potential TdA members and that, instead of focusing on tattoos, immigration authorities should focus on criminal activities and tactics. By understanding TdA’s operations, network and global reach, authorities would gain more accurate insights into the true nature of the threat, she said.

“The real danger lies in what’s happening right now — the criminalization of Venezuelan migration. The issue of the Tren de Aragua gang is being exploited to justify extreme measures,” she said. “ I find this deeply troubling because it doesn’t just affect the criminal group — it impacts all Venezuelans.”

Tattoos and prejudice

Experts say identifying people as TdA gang members just because of tattoos unfairly targets the Venezuelan immigrant community — what Briceño León calls “the crime of tattooing.”

An expert on organized crime in Colombia, Brazil, El Salvador and Venezuela, Briceño León said that while tattoos were once common symbols of rebellion or criminality — or gang membership — they have evolved worldwide into expressions of personal identity, memories, and simply interesting body art.

But for some Venezuelans, the tattoos have led to their deportation from the U.S. and disappearance into a maximum security mega prison in El Salvador, known as CECOT, that has been frequently accused of human-rights violations.

Families have told the Miami Herald that their loved ones sent to the prison were unfairly flagged by U.S. immigration officials as TdA gang members based on tattoos. Among those deported to El Salvador — without any evidence of a criminal background — was a man who had been granted refugee status after a 17-month background check; a Venezuelan asylum seeker; a professional soccer player who was once tortured by the Venezuelan regime for participating in protests, and a makeup artist.

The Trump administration has admitted in federal court that “many” of the Venezuelans it deported under the presidential wartime powers had no criminal records in the U.S. and that they were flagged and deported based on their tattoos and no other evidence of gang membership.

Even in South Florida, home to more than a quarter of the 900,000 Venezuelans in the U.S., Republican politicians have spread misleading information about the community. U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar of Miami claimed that the Venezuelan government intentionally sent criminals and mentally unstable individuals to the U.S. — but provided no evidence. Experts say promoting such stereotypes is harmful, especially about a highly educated community. Almost 60% of Venezuelans in the U.S. hold a college degree, a significantly higher proportion than the average for the Hispanic population in the country.

Venezuela’s economic chaos and political repression have forced nearly 8 million Venezuelans, certainly including some criminals, to flee their country looking for a better life. Targeting them as gang members simplistically — and mistakenly — based on tattoos, Briceño León said, undermines real police work — and fuels prejudice.

“People are punished, persecuted or targeted for the ‘crime’ of their appearance, for what they seem to be, instead of what they’ve actually done,” he said. “The truth gets lost in the process.”

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