The Trump administration swears it made absolutely every possible effort to confirm that the Venezuelan immigrants deported to El Salvador on the Ides of March actually were members of the dreaded Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang.
Just read this sworn statement from ICE Acting Field Director Robert L. Cerna, filed in support of the Trump administration after its defiance of a federal judge’s order to turn around the planes transporting 238 migrants landed it in court:
“Officers and agents well versed in gang activity in general and TdA in particular reviewed the information gathered on each alien, identifying TdA members based upon information such as previous criminal convictions… surveillance… evidence that the alien had committed crimes in coordination with known members of TdA… and admission of TdA membership by the alien.”
Cerna adds, “ICE did not simply rely on social media posts, photographs of the alien displaying gang-related hand gestures, or tattoos alone.”
But, unless there is something it is not saying, ICE seems to have done exactly that in the case of at least two deportees without criminal records or apparent gang ties. Both men do have tattoos, but they also have written statements from the particular tattoo artists attesting that the designs have nothing to do with any gang. Both also followed all the legal procedures for seeking asylum, registering with the Customs and Border Protection app, CPB One, in Mexico and presenting themselves at the assigned point of entry at the U.S. border at the designated date and time.
Nevertheless, both are on the list of the shackled prisoners who were frogmarched into the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador. They and other deportees are being held incommunicado indefinitely in a prison system where beatings and torture are said to be routine.
As has been reported in the Daily Beast and elsewhere, 36-year-old Jerce Reyes Barrios is a professional soccer player who is said by his lawyer to have left his native Venezuela a year ago after he was tortured with electric shocks and suffocation for participating in a demonstration against the authoritarian rule of Nicolas Maduro. The country where Barrios sought asylum has now consigned him to face the same treatment in El Salvador.
In a sworn statement, his attorney, Linette Tobin, said Barrios was placed in the Otay Mesa Detention Facility in San Diego County, California, upon arrival at the U.S. Border in September.
Barrios was accused of being a member of Tren de Aragua after ICE noticed he had a tattoo on his arm of a crown atop of a soccer ball, along with a rosary and the word ”Dios.” He explained that the tattoo was inspired not by a gang, but his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid. That was confirmed by a written statement from his tattoo artist. He also supplied the American authorities with a certification from Venezuela that he has no criminal record.
A Department Homeland Security (DHS) check of Baurios’ social media posts then produced a photo of him flashing what DHS took to be a gang hand sign. He explained that it was sign language for “I love you.’”
Barrios remained in detention pending a hearing before an immigration judge scheduled for April 17.
But on either March 1 or March 11, Barrios was suddenly transferred to Texas. He was loaded onto a plane on March 15. And one year after he fled Venezuela, he was flown into El Salvador to face brutality, the same kind he hoped to escape.
“Counsel and family have lost all contact with him and have no information regarding his whereabouts or condition,” his lawyer’s declaration says.
Barrios was joined by Fritzgeralth De Jesus, who had left Venezuela after being extorted and threatened by “colectivos,” the paramilitary thugs affiliated with the Maduro regime. De Jesus has a considerable number of tattoos. He also has a signed statement by his tattoo artist. It says in Spanish:
“To whom it may concern.”
I am Pedro Elias Freites Rodríguez, friend and tattoo artist of Frizgeralth De Jesus... I have about 8 years tattooing, in which I have made different designs to Frizgeralth as a canvas, which was to promote both my art as well as the fact that my friend wanted showy designs.. All the designs made to my friend and clients were made without any intention of promoting any violence or alluding to any gang or criminal group. They were only made for creative tastes and for the sake of advancing both myself as a tattoo artist and him getting good tattoos at a low price.
I thank him for his support as a customer and as a friend over the years.
You can see some of my work in my Instagram account @pedro.allinblack”
De Jesus also had a certified official document. It is headed:
MINISTRY OF THE PEOPLE’S POWER FOR INTERIOR RELATIONS, JUSTICE AND PEACE
OFFICE OF THE VICE MINISTRY OF INTERIOR POLICY AND LEGAL SECURITY
GENERAL DIRECTORATE FOR THE ARTICULATION OF JUSTICE AND PEACE, COORDINATION OF CRIMINAL RECORDS
Below that, it says:
“After reviewing the database of the Criminal Record Office and until the issuance of this document, it is hereby confirmed that the referred citizen DOES NOT HAVE A CRIMINAL RECORD IN THE BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF VENEZUELA.”
...
“This certificate is issued for the purpose of being presented to the authorities of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”
De Jesus was detained pending a final hearing on his application for asylum, which was set for April 10. But then he too was suddenly put on a plane to EL Salvador. His attorney, Joseph Giardina of Giardina & Guevara in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, can only think it was the tattoos.
“There is nothing else we could imagine had anything to do with it,” Giardina told the Daily Beast on Thursday.
Giardina is a veteran immigration lawyer, and the horrors of the penal system in El Salvador are such that he has successfully kept Salvadorans from being deported when they face prison time there.
Court papers filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in the case describe what those 238 deportees now face. In the case of De Jesus and Barrios, simply for having a few innocent tattoos.
“The range of violence occurring inside prisons in El Salvador at the hands of gangs and prison guards is acknowledged in the 2022 and 2023 U.S. State Department’s Human Rights Reports on El Salvador; detainees are subject to beatings, waterboarding, and use implements of torture on detainees’ fingers to try to force confessions of gang affiliation,” the papers say.
Following the arrival of De Jesus and Barrios and the others, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele posted a three-minute video on X that mocked the federal judge’s order to turn the planes around.
“Oopsie … Too late,” Bukele wrote.
His taunt was promptly reposted by Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, complete with a laughing emoji.
