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When Franco Jos\u00e9 Caraballo Tiapa<\/span> arrived at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in early February for a routine check-in, he thought he had little reason to worry.\u00a0<\/p>\n Caraballo, 26, had arrived in the U.S. in 2023 after fleeing persecution in Venezuela, lived with his wife in Dallas, and had no criminal record, his immigration attorney Martin Rosenow told The Intercept. He\u2019d checked in with ICE regularly while waiting on his asylum claim. But when an agent took special interest in his tattoos, they detained him and put him on a bus to the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas \u2014 and eventually on a plane to\u00a0CECOT<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n For Caraballo and at least half a dozen<\/a> other men, U.S. officials\u2019 assumptions about their body art played a significant role in classifying them as gang members and disappearing them to the notorious prison in El Salvador. The Intercept found that a very different standard applies for the federal agents tasked with keeping migrants out of the country and rounding up those targeted by President Donald Trump\u2019s deportation obsession.<\/p>\n On a public\u00a0\u201cgrooming standards\u201d webpage<\/a>\u00a0aimed at prospective Customs and Border Protection agents, the agency advises that any tattoos and brandings must be concealed if they are \u201cobscene or gang-related.\u201d In other words, agents are allowed to have the very markings for which Caraballo and others were disappeared into a Salvadoran gulag \u2014 as long as they keep them out of sight.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like saying \u2018our gangsters are okay,\u2019\u201d Rosenow said. \u201cBut a young man fleeing persecution from his home country, a father of two little girls who likes to have ink on his body to commemorate his daughters, he is going to be subjected to this kind of horrifying shit?\u201d<\/p>\n One of the tattoos for which Caraballo was targeted showed a watch face, which Rosenow said depicted the hour of his daughter\u2019s birth. Neither Rosenow nor Caraballo\u2019s wife has been able to speak to him since he was sent to CECOT in March.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you have tattoos it\u2019s proof-positive you\u2019re a gang member, yet CBP is authorized to hire people with these tattoos as long as they cover them up?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Like Caraballo\u2019s pocket watch tattoo, many of the markings U.S. officials have singled out as evidence of gang affiliation strain credulity. Jerce Reyes Barrios, a 36-year-old former professional soccer player and coach from Venezuela, was held without bond pending his asylum application and later whisked out of the country to indefinite detention in CECOT over a tattoo of a soccer ball with a crown \u2014 a nod to his support for Real Madrid.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the height of hypocrisy,\u201d said Linette Tobin, an immigration attorney in San Diego who was representing Reyes in his asylum claim. \u201cAccording to this administration, if you have tattoos it\u2019s proof-positive that you\u2019re a gang member, yet CBP is authorized to hire people with these tattoos as long as they cover them up?\u201d<\/p>\n CBP officials did not respond to The Intercept\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n The grooming standard does not necessarily imply that active or ex-gang members are welcome in federal agencies, which employ rigorous background checks and have a clear incentive to weed out prospective employees with problematic histories or conflicting loyalties. CBP, which draws many recruits from areas along the U.S.\u2013Mexico border,\u00a0has itself recognized an uncomfortable pattern<\/a>\u00a0of corrupt agents who work with family members and associates in criminal operations to assist in the smuggling of people and drugs and other contraband.<\/p>\n But the guidance appears to indicate a gang tattoo would not in itself be disqualifying.<\/p>\n Gang experts have\u00a0repeatedly argued<\/a>\u00a0that tattoos are an ineffective way to identify members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang to which U.S. officials assumed Caraballo, Reyes, and other men sent to CECOT belong. The trait is more associated with MS-13 and other Central American gangs. Tattoos on federal agents have also raised the possibility of infiltration by white nationalists and other extremists. On Martha\u2019s Vineyard, controversy erupted in June when an ICE agent was photographed with a tattoo on his arm of a Valknut, a Nordic and Germanic symbol that has been appropriated by white nationalists. (At the time, a DHS spokesperson objected to allegations that the tattoo was a marker of extremism on the part of the agent,\u00a0claiming that it symbolized \u201cwarrior culture.\u201d<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n
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Gang tattoos have<\/span> a sordid history in some law enforcement agencies, most notably the Los Angeles County Sheriff\u2019s Department, where deputy gangs have long shown their loyalty \u2014 or notch their belt after killing someone \u2014 with body ink.<\/p>\n