Tattoos used by officials to identify and deport Venezuelan migrants
Advocates for Venezuelan migrants say immigration authorities are using tattoos to wrongfully tie them to the Tren de Aragua prison gang.
Trump administration officials directed law enforcement nationwide to pursue suspected gang members into their homes, in some cases without any sort of warrant, according to a copy of the directive exclusively obtained by USA TODAY.
The directive, issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi March 14, provides the first public view of the specific implementation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act invoked to deport migrants accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
A day after that announcement, March 15, immigration officials apprehended and flew more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which has been criticized for its harsh and dangerous conditions.
For weeks, news organizations, members of Congress, the courts and advocates have pressed the administration to provide operational details and evidence to support its claims these men are Tren de Aragua members, a newly designated foreign terrorist organization.
The memo was provided to USA TODAY by the open government group, Property of the People, which they obtained through a Freedom of Access of Information request.
Legal experts examined the document that reveals the following:
- It provides directives to front-line officers apprehending suspected Tren de Aragua members, suggesting officers obtain a warrant of apprehension and removal “as much as practicable.” Those administrative warrants are signed by immigration officers, not judges like criminal warrants.
- Due to a “dynamic nature of law enforcement procedures” officers are free to “apprehend aliens” based on their “reasonable belief” they meet the definitions, the memo states.
- It purports to grant authority for police to enter a suspected “Alien Enemy’s residence” if “circumstances render it impracticable” to first obtain a warrant.
The memo told law enforcement that immigrants deemed “Alien Enemies” are “not entitled to a hearing, appeal or judicial review.”
Representatives from the Department of Homeland Security referred USA TODAY’s questions about the memo to the Department of Justice.
DOJ did not respond to requests for comment.
Administration officials defend the deportations they say are based on internal intelligence and criminal histories of some of the Venezuelans. Government lawyers say the special designation as a terrorist organization and Alien Enemies Act affords it wide berth to respond to a national security threat.
Despite its emergency rulings on the issue, the Supreme Court has yet to tackle the overall question of whether the Alien Enemies Act grants the president the authority to expel alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal group.
“That’s really concerning,” said Monique Sherman, an attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network who successfully obtained one of the temporary restraining orders on April 22 to protect 100 people detained in Colorado from removal under the 1798 law.
“The home under all constitutional law is the most sacred place where you have a right to privacy,” Sherman said. “By this standard, spurious allegations of gang affiliation means the government can knock down your door.”
Kathleen Bush-Joseph a lawyer and policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute said the memo reflects the Trump administration’s lightning-fast deportation push to short-circuit the backlogged immigration courts.
She also believes it reflects a challenge Immigration and Customs Enforcement is facing nationwide: immigrants are fearful and have been cautioned against opening their doors to any law enforcement.
“I would anticipate this will be challenged in court,” Bush-Joseph said. “It would be a departure from the law. It would allow searches of homes without warrants.”
Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead counsel in the challenges to uses of the Alien Enemies Act, said the DOJ directives run counter to the constitution’s protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
“The administration’s unprecedented use of a wartime authority during peacetime was bad enough,” Gelernt said. “Now we find out the Justice Department was authorizing officers to ignore the most bedrock principle of the Fourth Amendment by authorizing officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant.”
The impact of the assertion that suspects are not entitled to any judicial review has been challenged already in federal courts and restraining orders for deportations are active in New York, Texas and Colorado.
On April 7, a split U.S. Supreme Court directed the administration to provide detainees a chance to challenge their case “in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”
The details revealed for the first time in the memo represent dangerous waters for police nationwide, said Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People.
“The documents reveal the Trump administration has authorized every single law enforcement officer in the country, including traffic cops, to engage in immigrant roundups explicitly outside due process,” Shapiro said.
CBS News reported that as of April 17, the Trump administration had signed 456 partnership agreements with local law enforcement to ask questions about immigration status. Under some agreements, local jurisdictions take on enforcement operations.
Bondi’s memo attached a copy of the Alien Enemy Validation Guide that has been scrutinized by immigration attorneys nationwide.
It assigns a point system based on a person’s court record, but also subjective measures such as phone calls with TdA members, observations of hand signs, use of graffiti and clothing.