Tattoos of crowns, a clock and other symbols have been used by the Trump administration to allege Venezuelan men deported from the U.S. are members of the Tren de Aragua gang. But experts and police in a Colorado city who have investigated the gang say tattoos aren’t reliable markers of affiliation.
The administration alleges the deportees it sent to El Salvador’s notorious maximum security prison are gang members, mostly with Tren de Aragua, and some with MS-13. It has also acknowledged that “many” of them have no criminal records.
President Trump invoked the 1798 wartime Alien Enemies Act, claiming Tren de Aragua is invading the United States, to deport many of the men. The administration also declared Tren de Aragua a terrorist organization.
Court documents, lawyers and family members of some of the migrants have said their tattoos were reasons they were determined to be alleged Tren de Aragua members.
The wife of Franco Jose Caraballo, a barber from Venezuela with no criminal record, said officers kept asking questions about his tattoo of a pocket watch that marks the time of their daughter’s birth.
A lawyer for Caraballo says he’s not a gang member and his wife said he is innocent when asked what worries her about his detention in the Salvadoran prison.
Franco Caraballo’s Family via Reuters 
Another man, Andry José Hernández Romero, has crown tattoos over the words “Mom” and “Dad.” Hernández Romero is a makeup artist who identifies as gay. He faced discrimination and threats in Venezuela because of his sexual orientation and political views and was seeking asylum in the U.S., his attorney said in a court filing.
A questionnaire, used in correctional facilities to assess potential gang affiliation, appears to show that Hernández Romero’s tattoos were the only basis to allegedly connect him to Tren de Aragua.
“The crown has been found to be an identifier for a Tren de Aragua gang member,” an officer wrote in the filing.
Many experts disagree that tattoos can identify members of the gang.
“Expert after expert tells us tattoos are not a reliable indicator of whether you’re part of this particular gang,” Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who is leading the legal challenge against the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, told 60 Minutes.
Rebecca Hanson, an assistant professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Florida, wrote in a court filing for the case that there are no tattoos, symbols or hand gestures associated with the group.
“The TdA, and gangs more generally in Venezuela, do not have a history of using tattoos to indicate membership,” she said. “TdA members may, of course, have tattoos, but this is not part of a collective identity.”
In Aurora, Colorado, which Mr. Trump has claimed is a “war zone” overrun by the Tren de Aragua, Police Chief Todd Chamberlain said it’s very difficult to identify Tren de Aragua members.
Chamberlain said he would not describe the city as a “war zone,” but said Aurora has been “ground zero” for the gang’s activities. The city saw organized violent crime concentrated in three apartment complexes, one of which is now shuttered.
The Aurora Police Department likely has the best understanding of the Tren de Aragua gang of any U.S. law enforcement agency, he said.
“It’s unlike MS-13, it’s unlike a Crip or a Blood,” he said. “If you go back to gangs in the early ’80s or the ’90s again, the way they walked, the way they talked, what they wore, they had very obvious signs.”
But Tren de Aragua does not, he said.
Rather than focusing on trying to identify gang members, Chamberlain said his department has focused on criminal activity.
“For us, it wasn’t about what gang they were involved in. It’s about what criminal activity they were involved in, and we knew that there was criminal activity,” he said. “If we could connect it to TdA as we were evolving this process, that’s great.”
Chamberlain said his department counted a total of nine confirmed Tren de Aragua members who passed through Aurora in the last two years.
Jeanette Rodriguez, who serves as a liaison between local law enforcement and the Venezuelan migrant community in Aurora, said Tren de Aragua members don’t flaunt obvious signs of gang membership.
“If you compare it to like MS-13, they’re very proud of who they are, and they would tattoo them on their faces, and are very proud of who they are. Tren de Aragua, they know the value of laying low,” she said.
Hanson noted that the Trump administration’s partial reliance on tattoos to conclude migrants are members of Tren de Aragua “appears to result from an incorrect conflation of gang practices in Central America and Venezuela.”
It’s different than in El Salvador and Honduras, where “gangs have long used tattoos to indicate membership and identity,” she said.
At CECOT, the El Salvador prison, many of the inmates have prominent tattoos. One, Marvin Vazquez, who is an MS-13 member, said “you gotta kill” to get a tattoo like the “MS” ones he showed on his chest and abdomen.
Vazquez was arrested in El Salvador after the government declared war on the gangs in 2022.
Gustavo Villatoro, El Salvador’s minister of justice and public security, said tattoos are one way the government identifies gang members. He said not all the prisoners in CECOT have been convicted of crimes.
Top White House officials have argued the Trump administration does not need to follow due process to remove individuals from the U.S. under the Alien Enemies Act. However, on Monday, April 7, the Supreme Court said detainees must receive notice that they are subject to removal under the law and must be allowed to challenge their detention.
Asked if he was worried some migrants were incorrectly identified as gang members, Mr. Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said he’s not.
“I’ll trust the men and women at ICE,” Homan said. “I’ve been assured numerous times that everybody in that plane from Venezuela was a TdA member. The rest of ’em were MS-13.”
Homan said the government did not rely just on tattoos, but would not share evidence to prove the deportees are gang members.
And in cases like those of Caraballo and Hernández Romero, it’s unclear what other basis was used to allege they are Tren de Aragua members.
