A hair-raising internal document that shows how the Trump administration is identifying alleged Venezuelan gang members makes it clear how easy it is to send the wrong people to an El Salvadoran gulag.
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By all accounts, the El Salvadoran gulag that houses the 200+ Venezuelan nationals deported from the United States is a terrible place — even for hardened criminals. Just imagine how bad it must be for those who don’t belong there at all… and you’ll have to rely on your imagination because there is a really good chance that you will never hear it from them (certainly not while Donald Trump is in office).
Of course, that assumes that the United States actually did deport individuals who are not members of Tren de Aragua (TdA) or MS-13.
However, that seems extraordinarily likely in light of information about some of the deportees that has already been unearthed, as well as the new revelation of internal Trump administration documents that show that the classification of who is or isn’t designated as a gang member is destined to result in innocent individuals falsely being swept up in ICE’s raids.
On Friday, the ACLU included an “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” in one of its court filings that demonstrates how easy it is to label a person as a member of TdA.
It is based on a system that awards points to certain characteristics and, if an individual (who is older than 14, Venezuelan, and not a citizen or permanent resident) “scores” at least eight points, then they will likely be “validated” as gang members.
However, that point system appears to be deeply flawed.
For example, court records identifying an individual as a member of TdA are worth five points, and participating in criminal activity with TdA members is worth six. That means, on their own, neither of these activities would be enough to cross that threshold.
However, engaging in written communication with a known TdA member is worth six points, while conducting a financial transaction with one is worth three.
In other words, if you are involved in a human trafficking operation with TdA, you don’t clear the eight-point threshold, but if you unknowingly sell a gang member a car and first exchange some text messages about it, you might get a one-way ticket to a prison camp.
Then, of course, there is the issue of tattoos and other forms of “symbolism,” as the document describes it.
A tattoo denoting membership or allegiance to TdA is worth four points. However, this isn’t the 1950s, when only criminals and sailors had tattoos. Nowadays, a third of Americans have them.
And a second document included in the filing shows just how much room for interpretation there is… and how great the possibility is that those identifying and rounding up migrants are making terrible mistakes.
Among the images identified as those seen on members of TdA are crowns, stars, trains, and the “Jump Man” logo of the Michael Jordan brand.
In addition, according to the second document, the Chicago Field Office of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “has obtained additional information to help identify TdA members,” which includes that they are young males and are dressed in “high-end urban street wear” and “favor the Chicago Bulls basketball jersey, specifically Michael Jordan’s jersey with the number ‘23.’”
Seriously, what are we doing?
If those tattoos and those outfits are sufficient to get you deported (and they do, since they are each worth four points), then you might as well ship half of Chicago to El Salvador because, as the geniuses in the DHS field office may be aware, Jordan is kind of a big deal in the Windy City.
To be fair, it does take input from a supervisor to get somebody deported solely on “symbolism,” but ICE hasn’t shown a lot of restraint so far, which means that might only spare some innocent people.
Even worse, once you find yourself in El Salvador, you might as well have fallen off the face of the Earth because there is no contact with family members and lawyers.
And it’s not as though the Trump administration has any interest in bringing back people who were wrongfully flown there, at least not without having them sign ironclad non-disclosure agreements, because that would amount to admitting that the current system is flawed (to put it lightly), and it would surely result in news stories detailing the horrors that innocent people were put through.
In other words, the poor individuals who were sent to El Salvador because they were erroneously identified as TdA members will likely have to stay there, either because nobody in the Trump administration cares that they got the wrong people or because they want to cover up their mistakes.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
