The defenders say that the defective “control list” targets the Venezuelans for the withdrawal under the Act to War: NPR

Immigrant rights defenders say that the US government uses a “unreliable indicators” control list to decide whether Venezuelan men are members of the Gang Tren in Aragua and subjected to the abolition of the Extraterrestrial Enemies Act, a law rarely used in wartime.

THE The control list was revealed on Friday judicial deposits In a case translated by THE American Civil Liberties Union, which questions the use by the Trump Administration of the Extraterrestrial Enemies Act To remove 137 members of Venezuelan suspicious gangs to a maximum security prison in Salvador.

ACLU, in a preliminary injunction request, cited several examples of Venezuelan men sent to El Salvador, accused of being gang members because of their tattoos. They include a professional football player with a tattoo of a football ball with a crown, similar to the Real Madrid Football Club logo.

Tren de Aragua is a gang recently appointed by the Trump administration as a foreign terrorist organization.

However, many members of the accused’s family, as well as their lawyers, deny that their relatives have an affiliation with the gang.

“The government’s control list suggests that tattoos and other unreliable indicators play a huge role among Venezuelan men finding themselves in a brutal Salvadoral prison, perhaps for the rest of their lives,” said Lee Genernt, deputy director of the ACLU immigrant rights project on Monday. “Individuals must have the right to challenge their designation as gang members, even if this war authority can be used in peacetime.”

Karoline Leavitt, press secretary of the White House, told journalists on Monday that “there is a litany of criteria that (DHS) uses to ensure that these people are considered to be foreign terrorists and to ensure that they qualify for expulsion”.

What court documents have revealed

One of the documents contained in the Friday file entitled Enemies insured: Validation guide for extraterrestrial enemiesProvides a checklon of 20 observations divided into six categories. The categories include legal results, criminal conduct and information and symbolism.

The control list attributes total points to different categories for each immigrant, including “the subject has tattoos designating membership / loyalty to ADD” and the subject “… displays badges, logos, ratings, drawings or a dress known to indicate allegiance to ADD.”

Each observation has an attributed value ranging from two points, up to 10 points. According to the document, migrants who have a total score of eight or more points “are validated as members of ADD”, and will receive an “opinion and mandate of apprehension and move under the Act on Extraterrestrial Enemies”.

“The extraterrestrials marking 6 or 7 points can be validated as members of the ADD; you should consult a supervisor and (office of the main legal advisor), examining all of the facts, before taking this determination,” according to the instructions from the control list.

Internal security surveysand local law organizations such as Texas Department of Public Securitydeclared that the members of Tren of Aragua have tattoos showing a variety of images, including AK-47, trains, clocks, crowns, stars and Jumpman logo, used to promote the Air Jordan basketball sneakers.

But Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan investigation journalist who wrote a lot about Tren de Aragua, says that tattoos are an unreliable and very subjective way to identify gang members.

“Tattoos are not an identifier for Tren de Aragua,” said Rísquez at NPR. “Maybe there is a member of Tren de Aragua who has this tattoo, but that is not enough to identify them as Tren de Aragua.”

She said that more surveys are needed before welcoming someone to be part of the gang.

“These are tattoos that have become fashionable among young Venezuelans and Latin Americans,” said Rísquez.

A popular tattoo is the sentence “Real Hasta La Muerte”, or “real until my death. According to federal and local police, this sentence is a symbol used by Tren de Aragua. But he was invented by the singer of Puerto Rican Reggaeton, Anuel AA.

“Many young people have obtained this tattoo showing how much they are fanatics of the singer,” said Rísquez.

Families allege that tattoos have landed relatives in Salvador

Earlier this month, the Trump administration sent more than 230 Venezuelan men to the Centro of Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or Cecot, in the Salvador under the Act respecting extraterrestrial enemies – 137 of them under the law on extraterrestrial enemies, and 101 by virtue of regular deportation procedures.

But the administration provided contradictory information: although senior officials continue to say that all 238 Venezuelan men were members of Tren de Aragua, in court documents, an ice official conceded that some of the men did not have a criminal record. The absence of “specific information”, said the manager, “highlights the risk they pose.”

Josue Basto Lizcano, 27, is one of the men that the United States has sent to Salvador. He tried to enter the United States on September 7, 2024 via a CBP application that Trump closed in January.

But Basto was detained that day and was never released, said his sister Yesika Basto.

She told NPR until the November presidential election, her brother “told us that immigration agents accused her of being Tren of Aragua”.

“He is not part of any gang,” said Yesika Basto, adding that his brother has no criminal record in Venezuela or Colombia, the two places he experienced. “He cannot have a criminal record in the United States because it has never been free.”

His brother has several tattoos, including a clock that marks the time of the birth of his son, a rose and stars.

She described her brother as someone who loves adventure. In Colombia, he worked for a tourism company as a driver. He also helped the family’s cabinetmaker.

“My brother was a victim of discrimination because of his tattoos,” said Yesika Basto. “I know that many people have made crimes and errors, but we are not all the same.”