6 events in Passaic County with a date

Use of tattoos to ID gang members questioned

Internal documents show authorities are skeptical

By: Will Carless
and Rick Jervis
USA Today

..... Federal agents have been seeing up Venezuelan migrants and trans portion them to a Salvadoran prison based in large part on tattoos depicting stopwatches, Michael Jordan logs and other ink art they claim betrays an allegiance to the Tren de Argua street gang.
..... But internal 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.
..... "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), according to a 2023 "situational Awareness" bulletin on the criminal gang authored by U.S. Costumes 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.
..... The internal documents, provided exclusively to USA Today by the open government advocacy group Property of the People, come as pressure mounts on the Trump administration over its refusal to provide information about the arrest and expulsion of hundreds of Venezuelans it claims are TdA members. the group requested the documents under open records laws.
..... Attorneys for the detained migrants have said their clients have been swept up without due process and have been labeled as gang members with flimsy evidence.
..... "The administration is sending individuals to one of the worst prisons in the world, potentially for the rest of their lives, without any due process, even an opportunity for them to show that their tattoos have nothing to do with the gang," said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU lawyer and lead counsel in the challenge to the federal government's use of the Alien Enemies Act.
..... In response to USA Today's request for comment, a White House official said DHS' "Assessments go beyond tattoos, but we cannot get into intelligence matters that can compromise our operations."
..... Tren de Aragua had been a growing concern for immigration officials in recent years, the documents show.
..... They recount the organization's growth from a prison gang in the central state of Aragua that spread to neighboring counties before arriving to the U.S. among the recent waves of Venezuelan migrants.
..... But law enforcement officials interviewed by USA Today last fall [2024] described a much different group - one trying to establish a foothold, whose ranks are thin and whose activities in the U.S. pale in comparisons to more established criminal groups, such as Mara Salvatrucha, known as MS-13.
..... They said they had arrested members of Tren de Aragua in connection with crimes including brazen retail thefts, moped muggings in New York City and a jewelry heist in Denver.
..... The Trump administration has painted Tren de Aragua as a highly organized foreign terrorist organization infiltrating the country "aided and facilitated" by Venezuelan President Noclas Maduro, involved in "violent acts, including kidnapping, assault and murder."
..... The documents received by USA today make similar claims, but details about Tren de Aragua's purported activity point to patterns of sporadic violent acts and mostly small-time dealing and theft.
..... One document a National Gang Intelligence Center bulletin dated March 2024, claims Tren de Aragua members are "likely increasing their presence and involvement in criminal activity" in the United States and says the group has been involved in :homicide, extortion, kidnapping, human trafficking, human smuggling, fraud, drug and weapons trafficking."
..... But the document outliers just three criminal incident involving allege members of the gang: an August 2023 arrest of there individuals with alleged TdA gang tattoos who were shoplifting; a November 2023 shooting by another allege gang. member where a victim was shot in the leg at a party attended by "several other Venezuelan nationals": adn the Miami-area murder last year [2024] of a former Venezuelan police officer by alleged gang members.
..... Estimates place the gang's origians around 2014, said Rebecca Hanson, a University of Florida assistant professor of sociology, criminology and Latin American studies who co-edited the 2022 book "the Paradox of violence in Venezuela." The gang started as an organizing structural for men imprisoned during a period of mass incarceration that began under former President Hugo Chavez, Hanson told USA today.
..... It then evolved out of prisons into neighborhoods, she said. As people fled Venezuela by the millions amid violence, instability and corruption under Maduro, the gang grew into a structured criminal gorp that indulged in a variety of crimes.
..... Photos in the DHS documents depict tattoos believed to be associated with Trent DE Aragua, including the Jordan "jumpman" logo, trains, clocks, crowns, gas masks and the phase "Real Hasta La Muerte" ( Real Until death) in cursive lettering.
..... But lawyers and experts claim many of those tattoos are popular among Venezuelan nationals with no ties to the criminal gang. Unlike other Latin American gangs, Tren de Aragua doesn't require its members to get tattoos, Ronna Risquez, a Venezuelan journalist who wrote a book about the gang, told The Associated Press.
.....Family members and advocates say officials are rounding up members of an entire nationality without regard for their rights, often picking men with tattoos memorializing soccer teams, family members and their professions - not a dangerous gang.
..... Miami-based attorney Martin Rosenow said one of his clients, Franco Jose Caraballo, was arrested by ICE in Dallas on February 9 [2025] and flown to el Salvador,.
..... Rosenow said he's spoken to three other Venezuelan nationals - including on nationalized U.S. citizen - in Miami since Caraballo's disappearance. All of them have stopwatch tattoos -a popular cultural trend in Venezuela, he said.
..... "It's a gross violation of everything we stand for in this country," he said

..... Contributing: Bart Jansen and Eduardo Cuuevas, USA Today

HOME