ICE Is Using Pure Bullshit To Turn People Into Venezuelan Gang Members To Keep Hitting Its Daily Arrest Quota

Donald Trump has decided he can’t do immigration enforcement without doing war crimes. That’s where we’re at now as a country: under the thumb of someone exercising executive war powers to remove anyone looking faintly Mexican from the country under the extremely dubious theory that the people rounded up by ICE are all members of foreign gangs.

Of course, it’s not limited to warriors or wars. The Trump Administration is now just disappearing people for exercising their First Amendment rights. But, in this case, the outlandish claim is that everyone who was arrested and flown (in violation of a federal injunction!) to El Salvador to rot in that country’s prisons is a member of gangs like MS-13 and… um… Tren de Aragua.

Oh wait. You haven’t heard of Tren de Aragua, a.k.a. TdA? Don’t blame your service provider and/or your social media feeds. The gang Trump (sort of) declared “war” on is something new. It’s not MS-13. Apparently, it’s the new “most dangerous thing ever,” even if there’s nothing that demonstrates TdA is making the sort of inroads into America that MS-13 has.

But Trump has always been able to round up rubes to help with the duping. That’s where New York City mayor Eric Adams — a recent recipient of Trump largesse — comes into play, as Max Rivlin-Nadler reports for Hell Gate.

The Trump administration has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport more than 200 Venezuelans to a massive prison in El Salvador without any due process. How has the president justified using a 227-year-old law that has only been wielded during actual wars to override the Constitution? He claims these men are members of the gang “Tren de Aragua.”

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[T]he NYPD and Mayor Eric Adams […] spent much of 2024 pushing a narrative that New York, which is home to thousands of recently-arrived Venezuelan migrants, is somehow being inundated with members of a small, relatively new regional gang that is named for the Tocorón prison in the Venezuelan state of Aragua. 

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“We believe they are participating in illegal behavior, and they’re the source of some of the increases in robberies and pattern robberies, particularly on scooters. And we continue to monitor the situation, but it is alarming,” Adams said. He added that Tren de Aragua was “a very dangerous gang,” and that he had sent his NYPD deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism to Colombia to gather information. 

Scooter robberies? Vague “illegal behavior?” Well, no wonder Trump deployed his war powers to rid this country of a threat incapable of being coherently defined by the NYC mayor in the president’s back pocket.

Supposedly the easiest way to identify members of a gang no one had really ever heard of before Trump started sending planeloads of non-white people to prisons in El Salvador is by their tattoos. After all, MS-13 is notorious for its inking and its members’ inability to blend into any society that isn’t currently bathing itself in bathtub meth money.

In fact, ICE has its own guide [PDF] for identifying TdA members by their tattoos. But as American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick pointed out on Bluesky, the guidelines are somewhat even worse and more lax than the bullshit regular cops use to place people in (domestic) gang databases.

This nomination system uses points. Eight points is all it takes to get you labeled as someone fast-tracked for an indefinite prison sentence in a nation you weren’t even born in. A lot of this relies on tattoos. Four points for gang tattoos. Four points for any tattoo an ICE officer believes is a gang tattoo. Six points for texting anyone ICE thinks is a TdA member and 3 points for sending funds (via Cash app or other services) to anyone whose tattoos are presumed to be TdA-related.

Even if someone fails to hit the 8-point threshold for immediate expulsion to El Salvador (and, remember, we’re dealing with alleged Venezuelan gang members here), points can be added by any ICE officer or supervisor willing to put their thumb on the scale.

Aliens scoring 6 or 7 points may be validated as members of TDA; you should consult with a supervisor and OPLA, reviewing the totality of the facts, before making that determination; if you determine an alien should not be validated at this time as a member of TDA, when available, you should initiate removal proceedings under the INA.

This ICE guidance — obtained by the ACLU — relies heavily on identifying TdA members by their tattoos. But there’s a massive logical flaw here: unlike MS-13, TdA doesn’t treat tattoos as a basis for entry or a sign of loyalty. ICE already knows this. So does the DHS.

[I]nternal U.S. Department of Homeland Security and FBI documents obtained by USA TODAY reveal federal authorities for years have questioned the effectiveness of using tattoos to identify members of Tren de Aragua, also known as TdA.

“Gang Unit collections determined that the Chicago Bulls attire, clocks, and rose tattoos are typically related to the Venezuelan culture and not a definite (indicator) of being a member or associate of the (TdA),” reads a 2023 “Situational Awareness” bulletin on the criminal gang written by the U.S. Custom and Border Protection’s El Paso Sector Intelligence Unit.

In another DHS document, titled “ICE Intel Leads,” a former Venezuelan police official interviewed by authorities said tattoos are “the easiest but least effective way” of identifying members of the criminal gang. 

Everyone who hasn’t been completely corrupted by their association with Trump knows the accepted method of identifying gang members doesn’t actually work. Everyone in the inner circle doesn’t care. And ICE has never given a shit one way or the other, so long as it’s able to hit the ever-escalating expulsion benchmarks set by the administration and backed by barely-sentient FEDZ® doll Kristi Noem, who decided to issue a “tough on crime” statement in front of an overcrowded El Salvadoran prison cell while prominently displaying her $50,000 Rolex watch.

Between the bizarre invocation of the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since the abuse of Japanese US residents during World War II made it unfashionable and ICE’s enthusiasm for rounding up any foreigners officers come across, it’s no surprise areas where Latin Americans are a majority of the population are considered target-rich environments.

What is surprising, however, is that some local law enforcement agencies are viewing ICE as the enemy and the people they serve as people worth protecting from federal government overreach.

In Santa Fe County, N.M., last month, local police leaders stood before a packed auditorium and showed photos of their uniforms so residents would know what they look like — and, more pointedly, what ICE does not.

“Whatever happens around the country, whoever is president, you are our community. We are your officers,” Santa Fe Police Chief Paul Joye said with the help of a Spanish interpreter. “It is a fundamental human right that you feel safe in your home regardless of where you’re from.”

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Many police chiefs have opted to risk the ire of the federal government in an attempt to preserve trust with immigrant communities – a bond that can be tenuous even in the best of times.

In Boston, when police commissioner Michael Cox pointed out last month that his agency doesn’t have the authority to enforce immigration law, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said he’d “bring hell” to the city. On March 24, ICE arrested more than 300 people in Massachusetts.

It’s nice to know that at least a few cops aren’t on board with Trump’s anti-immigrant warfare. There’s still no unified front pushing back against ICE but every little bit helps. Unfortunately, none of this will matter to the Trump administration. It’s incapable of being shamed and it’s fine with massive amounts of collateral damage as long as its intended targets are included in the body count.