Venezuelan deported from US using gang 'points system', lawyers say
What is Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang targeted by Trump?BBC Verify: British man's tattoo wrongly linked to Venezuelan gang in US government document
He was then taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and was sent to the Otay Mesa Detention Centre in San Diego.At the centre, "he was flagged as a security risk for the sole reason of his tattoos", his lawyer wrote in a statement.His legal team says Mr Hernández's interrogation at the centre was carried out by an official from the private company CoreCivic - a company contracted by the government - not by Ice agents.CoreCivic official Arturo Torres, acting as interviewer, used a score system to determine whether a detainee is part of a criminal organisation.It has nine categories, each with its own score. According to the criteria, the detainees are considered gang members if they score 10 or more points, and they are considered suspects if they score nine or fewer points.Mr Hernández was given five points for the tattoos on his wrists, which included two crowns, according to paperwork signed in December 2024 by officers from the company.The interviewing officer wrote: "Detainee Hernández has a crown on each one of his wrist. The crown has been found to be an identifier for a Tren de Aragua gang member".The BBC has contacted CoreCivic for comment, but has not received a reply."So far, that form is the only government document linking Mr Hernández to the Tren de Aragua," Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Centre and part of the legal team representing the young Venezuelan, told BBC Mundo.Authorities have not provided further information about Mr Hernández's case, or the charges faced by him or other Venezuelans recently deported to El Salvador.
Scorecards for 'alien enemies'
Lawyers defending migrants' cases do not know whether the particular score system that marked Mr Hernández as a suspected member of Tren de Aragua has been used during the assessment of other detainees. However, authorities have acknowledged that tattoos are one of the criteria used for identifying gang members.According to court documents filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of Venezuelan deportees, there is second scoring guide which evaluates detainees on a 20-point scale.The form instructs agents on how to validate detainees as a member of Tren de Aragua under the Alien Enemies Act - a centuries-old law that has been invoked by Trump to detain and deport individuals considered enemies of the United States.Higher scores of 10 points are given to detainees who have criminal or civil convictions, sentencing memorandums, or criminal complaints that identify them as members of Tren de Aragua.Lower scores are for those with tattoos denoting their membership or loyalty to the gang (four points) - or who have insignias, logos, notes, drawings, or clothing indicating loyalty to it (also four points).The lowest scores (two points) are assigned if the detainee, for instance, appears on social media displaying symbols or hand gestures related to the gang.BBC Mundo reached out to DHS and Ice to request information about the scoring system used in the two forms, but received no response.However, DHS has previously published a statement on its website, called 100 Days of Fighting Fake News, stating that its assessments go well beyond tattoos and social media."We are confident in our law enforcement's intelligence, and we aren't going to share intelligence reports", the document said. "We have a stringent law enforcement assessment in place that abides by due process under the US Constitution."
What is the 1798 law that Trump used to deport migrants?
Jason Stevens, special agent in charge of the El Paso Homeland Security Investigations Office, told BBC Mundo that according to the guidelines, officers used a variety of criteria to identify a gang member.He said in addition to an individual's tattoos, officers look at criminal associations, monikers, social media activity and messages on phones.Lawyers representing deportees have included official government guidelines in their court cases, arguing that it is insufficient to identify a detainee as a member of Tren de Aragua based on photographs of tattoos.Venezuelan researcher and journalist Ronna Rísquez, author of a book about Tren de Aragua, dismisses the idea that tattoos are a criterion that defines membership in this group."Equating the Tren de Aragua gang with Central American gangs in terms of tattoos is a mistake," she warned. "You don't have to have a tattoo to be a member of the Tren de Aragua gang."
Transfer to notorious mega-prison
Unaware that he was suspected of belonging to Tren de Aragua, Mr Hernández was expecting to appear in a US court for another asylum-related hearing that he hoped could eventually allow him to remain in the country.By March 2025, he had spent nearly six months at the San Diego detention centre before being abruptly transferred to the Webb County Detention Centre in Laredo, Texas, while his asylum case was still pending.He was not the only person who would be transferred to that second centre.On 15 March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected Tren de Aragua members, arguing that Venezuelan authorities had ceded control over their territories to transnational criminal organisations.Without being able to contest the charges, Mr Hernández was deported that day as part of a group of 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans, to El Salvador's notorious mega-prison, known as the Terrorist Confinement Centre (Cecot).Mr Hernández had a court date scheduled for his asylum request, but according to his lawyers, authorities at the Webb County Detention Centre would not allow him to attend via video call.Since then, no-one has heard from him. His parents had no information about him until they were told that someone had seen a photo of their son in a Salvadoran prison.
Inside El Salvador's secretive mega-jailVenezuelans deported to mega-prison 'trapped in black hole'
'Crown tattoos were Andry's crime'
Mr Hernández designed and hand-embroidered his own costumes for the annual religious festival of known as the Three Wise Men of Capacho, his family say.He also designed the outfits for some of the girls for their own celebrations of the festival in his home state of Táchira, near the border with Colombia.The symbol that identifies the religious festival - which was officially declared part of Venezuela's national cultural heritage, and of which its residents are proud - is a golden crown.Since he was 7 years old, Mr Hernández has participated in the festival representing various biblical characters."Andry is a makeup artist, a theatre actor, and we all love him very much", said Miguel Chacón, president of the Capacho Three Kings Foundation, which organises the 108-year-old event. "Some young people get tattoos of the kings' crowns like Andry did. That was his crime."Hundreds of people in Capacho Nuevo, a modest agricultural town, participated in a vigil at the end of March to demand Mr Hernández's release. Some of them wore crowns.One of Mr Hernández's friends, Reina Cárdenas, maintained contact with him until a few days before his deportation. She showed BBC Mundo official documents indicating that the young man had no criminal record in Venezuela.
Mr Hernández dreamed of opening a beauty salon and helping his parents financially, Ms Cárdenas said by phone from Capacho Nuevo.Seeking a better future, Mr Hernández left his hometown and lived in Bogotá for a year, where he worked as a makeup artist and as a hotel receptionist.He returned to Venezuela after receiving a job offer at a television channel in Caracas, where he was excited by the idea of doing makeup for presenters, models, and beauty queens, Ms Cárdenas said."He did not stay in the TV station for more than a year because he was discriminated against for his sexual orientation and because of his political beliefs," she noted. "He received threats."Mr Hernández decided to leave Caracas and return to his hometown. "He wasn't well, he didn't want to leave his house," his friend said. He remained there for five months until May 2024, when he decided to travel to the US through the Darién jungle, despite his mother urging him to stay.
Today, Mr Hernández's mother, Alexis Romero de Hernández, can hardly bear the pain of not having him by her side. "I'm waiting for news of my son," she told BBC Mundo. "I want to know how he is. I wonder how they're treating him. If they gave him water. If they gave him food. Every day I think about him and ask God to bring him back to me."The last known image of Hernandez is a photo taken of him on the night of 15 March inside the Salvadoran mega-prison, when a American photojournalist Philip Holsinger documented the arrival of a group of alleged criminals for Time magazine.That was when he took a photo of a young man saying "I'm not a gang member. I'm gay. I'm a barber", Mr Holsinger wrote in his article.The man was chained and on his knees while the guards shaved his head. Mr Holsinger later learned that man was Mr Hernández."He was being slapped every time he would speak up… he started praying and calling out, literally crying for his mother," Holsinger told CBS. "Then he buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again."Mr Hernández's case has caused a stir in the US, and mystery surrounds his whereabouts. California Governor Gavin Newsom has requested his return, while four US congressional representatives travelled to El Salvador and requested to be provided with proof of life for him. They did not get it.
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The Guardian
21 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Cemetery of the living dead': Venezuelans recall 125 days in notorious El Salvador prison
Arturo Suárez struggles to pinpoint the worst moment of his incarceration inside a prison the warden boasted was 'a cemetery of the living dead'. Was it the day inmates became so exasperated at being beaten by guards that they threatened to hang themselves with their sheets? 'The only weapon we had was our own lives,' recalled the Venezuelan former detainee. Was it when prisoners staged a 'blood strike', cutting their arms with broken pipes and smearing their bedclothes with crimson messages of despair? 'SOS!' they wrote. Or was rock bottom for Suárez when he turned 34 while stranded in a Central American penitentiary prison officers had claimed he would only leave in a body bag? Suárez, a reggaeton musician known by the stage name SuarezVzla, was one of 252 Venezuelans who found themselves trapped inside El Salvador's notorious 'Cecot' terrorism confinement centre after becoming embroiled in Donald Trump's anti-immigrant crusade. After 125 days behind bars, Suárez and the other detainees were freed on 18 July after a prisoner swap deal between Washington and Caracas. Since flying home to Venezuela, they have started to open up about their torment, offering a rare and disturbing glimpse of the human toll of President Nayib Bukele's authoritarian crackdown in El Salvador and Trump's campaign against immigration. Suárez said conditions inside the maximum security prison were so dire he and other inmates considered killing themselves. 'My daughter's really little and she needs me. But we'd made up our minds. We decided to put an end to this nightmare,' he said, although the prisoners stepped back from the brink. Another detainee, Neiyerver Rengel, 27, described his panic after guards claimed he would probably spend 90 years there. 'I felt shattered, destroyed,' said the Venezuelan barber, who was deported to Cecot after being captured in Irving, Texas. Trump officials called the Venezuelans – many of whom had no criminal background – 'heinous monsters' and 'terrorists' but largely failed to produce proof, with many seemingly targeted simply for being Venezuelan and having tattoos. Norman Eisen, the executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, which is helping Rengel sue the US government for $1.3m, called the 'abduction' of scores of Venezuelans a stain on his country's reputation. 'It is shocking and shameful and every patriotic American should be disgusted by it,' said Eisen, who expected other freed prisoners to take legal action. Suárez's journey to one of the world's harshest prisons began in Chile's capital, Santiago, where the singer had moved after fleeing Venezuela's economic collapse in 2016. One day early last year, before deciding to migrate to the US, Suárez watched a viral YouTube video about the 'mega-prison' by the Mexican influencer Luisito Comunica. Bukele officials had invited Comunica to film inside Cecot as part of propaganda efforts to promote an anti-gang offensive that has seen 2% of the country's adult population jailed since 2022. Suárez, then a fan of El Salvador's social media-savvy president, was gripped. 'Wouldn't it be great if we could afford a package tour to go and visit Cecot?' he recalled joking to his wife. Little did the couple know that Suárez would soon be languishing in Cecot's cage-like cells, sleeping on a metal bunk bed. After entering the US in September 2024, Suárez worked odd jobs in North Carolina. In February, three weeks after Trump's inauguration, he was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents and, in mid-March, put on a deportation flight, the destination of which was not revealed. When the plane landed, its passengers – who were instructed to keep its blinds closed – had no idea where they were. The penny dropped when one detainee disobeyed the order and spotted El Salvador's flag outside. 'That's when we understood … where we were heading – to Cecot,' he said. Suárez described the hours that followed as a blur of verbal abuse and beatings, as disoriented prisoners were frogmarched on to buses that took them to Cecot's cell block eight. Suárez said the men were forced to shave their heads and told by the warden: 'Welcome to hell! Welcome to the cemetery of the living dead! You'll leave here dead!' As he was dragged off the bus, Suárez, who is shortsighted, said he asked a guard for help because his spectacles were falling off: 'He told me to shut up, punched me [in the face] and broke my glasses.' 'What am I doing in Cecot?' Suárez recalled thinking. 'I'm not a terrorist. I've never killed anyone. I make music.' Rengel had almost identical memories of his arrival: 'The police officers started saying we were going to die in El Salvador – that it was likely we'd spend 90 years there.' Noah Bullock, the head of the El Salvador-focused human rights group Cristosal, said activists had heard very similar accounts from prisoners in other Salvadoran jails, suggesting such terror tactics were not merely the behaviour of 'bad apple prison guards'. 'There's clearly a culture coming from the leadership of the prison system to inculcate the guards into operating this way, [into] using dehumanising and physical abuse in a systematic way.' Suárez said the Venezuelans spent the next 16 weeks being woken at 4am, moved between cells holding between 10 and 19 people, and enduring a relentless campaign of physical and psychological abuse. 'There's no life in there,' he said. 'The only good thing they did for us was give us a Bible. We sought solace in God and that's why nobody took their own life.' The musician tried to lift spirits by composing upbeat songs, such as Cell 31, which describes a message from God. 'Be patient, my son. Your blessing will soon arrive,' its lyrics say. The song became a prison anthem and Suárez said inmates sang it, one day in March, when the US homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, visited Cecot to pose by its packed cells. 'We aren't terrorists! We aren't criminals! Help!' the Venezuelans bellowed. But their pleas were ignored and the mood grew increasingly desperate, as the inmates were deprived of contact with relatives, lawyers and even the sun. 'There came a point where we had no motivation, no strength left,' Rengel said. Only in mid-June was there a glimmer of hope when prisoners were given shampoo, razors and soap and measured for clothes. 'They obviously wanted to hide what had happened from the world,' said Suárez, who sensed release might be close. One month later the men were free. Suárez said he was determined to speak out now he was safely back in his home town of Caracas. 'The truth must be … heard all over the world. Otherwise what they did to us will be ignored,' said the musician, who admitted he had once been an admirer of Bukele's populist campaigns against political corruption and gangs. 'Now I realise it's just a complete farce because how can you negotiate with human lives? How can you use human beings as bargaining chips?' Suárez said. A spokesperson for El Salvador's government did not respond to questions about the prisoners' allegations. Last week, the homeland security department's assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, dismissed prisoners' claims of abuses as 'false sob stories'. Suárez hoped never to set foot in El Salvador or the US again but said he forgave his captors. 'And I hope they can forgive themselves,' he added. 'And realise that while they might escape the justice of man they will never be able to escape divine justice.' In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
The Guardian
a day ago
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John Oliver on police gang databases: ‘Get rid of them'
After an extended summer holiday, John Oliver returned to his desk at Last Week Tonight to dissect US law enforcement's overreliance on faulty and unregulated gang databases. Such databases – as Oliver put it, 'basically lists the police keep of people they say are involved in gangs' – have been used to justify numerous deportations under the Trump administration, including the deportation and detention of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadorian immigrant from Maryland whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) illegally deported due to what they later admitted was an 'administrative error'. The deportation stemmed from a wrongful inclusion on a gang database – in 2019, officers apparently observed Ábrego at a Home Depot and filed a report that he belonged to a gang, based on the fact that he wore a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with 'rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents' and that they 'know such clothing to be indicative of the Hispanic gang culture'. According to the report, 'wearing the Chicago Bulls hat represents [that] they are in good standing with the MS-13'. 'Which is already a little bit weird, because it implies that somehow, if you're not up to date on your monthly MS-13 dues, your Bulls hat privileges get revoked,' Oliver joked. The officer who filed that report also cited an anonymous tip that Ábrego was a member of MS-13; the officer was also suspended a week later for unrelated misconduct and ultimately fired. 'Nevertheless, that gang allegation meant that Ábrego García was denied bond and spent months locked up in Ice detention,' Oliver explained, an outcome that was 'ridiculous. A person's clothing shouldn't be criteria for locking them up for eight months. As we all know, the worst consequence of fashion choices should be getting roasted by teens on TikTok.' Ábrego's saga is one of many stories that bring the government's use of so-called 'gang databases' into question. Around the country, many local and state police departments keep these databases, often without disclosing them, despite investigations finding them to be 'notoriously inconsistent and opaque', 'riddled with questionable entries and errors' and 'rife with unreliable intelligence', to quote several reports cited by Oliver. When it comes to what constitutes a 'gang', there's 'a lot of variability here', said Oliver. 'Not all gang members may even be engaged in crime.' As one researcher put it: 'Not all gang members are criminals, and not all criminals are gang members.' 'Unfortunately, none of that nuance is on display in these databases,' said Oliver, and none of these lists have oversight from any other branch of government or other law enforcement. The criteria for inclusion are police observations and 'self-admissions', which basically means, according to Oliver, 'We found something on your social media that we decided constitutes you admitting that you're in a gang.' That could include posts with the word 'gang', such as a post from a teenager with the caption 'happy birthday, gang', added to a database on the grounds of self-admission. 'And if the bar is that low, anything is basically a confession,' said Oliver. 'A pic of you holding a diploma with the caption 'killed it?' Congratulations, grad, but now you're wanted for murder. 'And while so far I've been saying anyone can be added to these lists, those who end up on them are heavily people of color,' he continued. At one point, Washington DC's database had only one white person on its list. 'Do you know how few lists there are with only one white guy on them?' Oliver joked. 'It's basically this database and the cast of Hamilton. That is it.' Additions can also be motivated by spite; in 2020, a cop in Phoenix registered 17 Black Lives Matter protesters as 'ACAB gang members' in retaliation. Most states also do not require states to notify people if they put them on a gang database. 'And when it comes to immigrants, the designation of gang member can be truly life-altering,' said Oliver. 'It can be the reason that someone is denied various pathways to remain in the US, and it can make someone a higher priority for deportation and the target of a raid.' Oliver relayed the story of a Hispanic teen in Long Island named Alex who was added to a gang database by a school resource officer after he was seen wearing bright blue sneakers, which school security guards told him was associated with the gang MS-13. He had also doodled '504' on his backpack, which is the country code for Honduras, his country of origin. A few months later, Ice agents arrested him, saying they heard he was a gang member, and eventually deported him. When a police commissioner in Alex's county was asked why he felt local law enforcement needed to partner with Ice, he answered: 'If we have intelligence that they are a gang member, that's not necessarily a crime … The intel that we have may not indicate a state crime. The intel may be small on them, but nothing that is going to keep them in jail. So if we perceive someone as a public safety threat, we utilize all of our tools, which again includes immigration tools, so we'll partner with the Department of Homeland Security to target them for detention.' Oliver fumed in response: 'If someone is on your list of big bad criminals, and you can't find any big bad crime to arrest them for, that suggests the issue might be your fucking list. 'It is pretty clear that gang databases are way too easy to get on, way too hard to get off, and can turn people's lives upside down,' he added. 'So what do we do? Well, I'd argue we get rid of them. And if you think, 'Well, hold on, how will police then stop gang violence?' I'd say, with police work. They could and should do actual police work focusing on where violence is concentrated, instead of fixating on labels. 'I'm not saying that violence associated with gangs isn't real or isn't a problem,' he concluded. 'I'm just saying the answer needs to go beyond policing and way beyond these databases.'
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
Convicted Algerian criminal is allowed to stay in Britain... because he would be mocked in his home country for dressing as a woman
A convicted Algerian criminal has been allowed to stay in Britain after claiming he would be mocked for wearing women's clothes and makeup if he returned to Algeria. The 27-year-old, who claims to be transgender, has been jailed for robbery and committed multiple offences including burglary, theft and battery since being granted refugee status in 2013. In arguing against his deportation, the repeat offender, identified only as MS, claimed he would be targeted in Algeria because of his sexuality - described to a court as 'gay, transvestite and/or transgender'. And an asylum judge agreed, upholding his appeal against the Home Office 's revocation of his refugee status. Upper Tribunal Judge Christopher Hanson said: 'Were MS to return to Algeria and be open about his sexuality, he would be at risk of mockery, harassment, discrimination and potential harm from non-state actors. 'Were he to wear women's clothes and makeup, he would certainly draw negative attention to himself, and would likely be subjected to ridicule, hostility and possible harm... 'Algerian society would not generally accept men dressing as women or asserting that they are transgender. 'Indeed, [his] being ridiculed for wearing women's clothes and make up in public areas is entirely plausible, as are his father's threats to kill him on account of his behaviour. 'A family would deem such actions as deeply shameful and humiliating, and would do their utmost to prevent their son from bringing embarrassment and shame in this way. 'If MS chooses to dress in women's clothing or make up, this would heighten the threat of abuse.' The Upper Tier Tribunal (UTT) of the Asylum and Immigration Chamber was told that MS is a gay man recognised as a refugee 'who was and is a transvestite and/or is transgender'. The hearing, held in Birmingham, was told that since arriving in Britain 12 years ago he had been convicted of numerous crimes. 'Between April 2014 and January 2015, [MS] received four convictions for offences including: burglary and theft; attempted burglary with intent to steal; using threatening, abusive, insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause fear or provocation of violence; theft,' the tribunal heard. MS received a warning letter from officials in September 2015, after the decision was taken not to deport him due to Algeria's 'situation'. He received eight further convictions between May 2016 and June 2018 for offences including 'theft; resisting or obstructing a constable; failing to surrender to custody at appointed time and various driving offences'. In August of the same year, he was convicted for offences including theft and 'racially or religiously aggravated fear or provocation of violence in words or writing'. He was again given a warning letter in September 2018 after a decision was made not to pursue deportation, and after further convictions between December 2018 and January 2019 he was given more warning letters. In February 2019, he was issued 'administrative removal papers as an overstayer', following the expiry of his refugee limited leave to remain. MS was in and out of prison after this point, and came to the attention of authorities in January of the following year after being convicted for offences including battery. He was sentenced to four years and three months in prison after receiving a conviction for robbery and breaching a criminal behaviour order. A deportation order was made in August 2022, and he was served with a notice of the decision to revoke his refugee status in the same month. The Home Office asserted in July 2023 that the situation in Algeria had changed and that MS would no longer be an 'individual who would face treatment amounting to persecution' in the country. However, a 'country expert' told the tribunal that while 'homosexuality is not illegal in Algeria engaging in homosexual acts is a punishable offence', and those who do not hide their sexuality are at risk of 'physical violence'. The Upper Tribunal heard that in interviews in May 2023, MS said: 'He liked to play with girls and would dress up in his sister's clothes for which his father would beat him. 'His father would chain him to a wall and throw "rocks" at him.' MS said that he had been raped as a child and had also been bullied in school for acting 'like a girl'. He said he feared for his life if he had to return to Algeria, where their father still lives. The judge found that the asylum seeker 'could well end up destitute and living on the streets', and that 'mental health problems would make him particularly vulnerable in this respect'. Judge Hanson said: 'I find a holistic assessment of the evidence shows there is sufficient to justify the maintaining of the grant of international protection.' The judge found the first-tier tribunal made a legal error because it did not consider the 'protected characteristics' for which the asylum seeker has been 'recognised as a refugee'.
