Caracas Chronicles

What could Andry Hernández and Diego Ibarra possibly have in common? If you’ve been consuming the barrage of news and propaganda about Trump’s treatment of deportees and alleged gangbangers, you may have heard about at least one of them. Hernández is a makeup artist and hair stylist from Capacho, a small town in the Venezuelan Andes. He was featured days ago in The New Yorker magazine. ICE took him from a port of entry to the U.S. and sent him to El Salvador on March 15. He remains there, in Bukele’s CECOT, isolated and unable to contact his lawyers.

Diego Ibarra is also a Venezuelan man. He became newsworthy for being the brother of José Antonio Ibarra, the killer of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley. José Ibarra was given a life sentence last year in a U.S. court, while the horrible case has been used by Trump to inflame anti-Venezuelan sentiment and to pass a namesake law.

Diego Ibarra will now spend four years in prison for possessing a fake green card and entering the U.S. illegally, but interestingly, the motives used to profile him and Andry Hernández as criminals are identical, despite their rather different backgrounds.

Ibarra had a criminal record in the United States. CNN en Español chiefly reports that he has “alleged ties” with Tren de Aragua according to a prosecutor in Georgia: tattoos of a five-point crown on the left side of his neck and three five-point stars on the right side. On the contrary, Andry had entered the U.S. legally as an asylum seeker, but an ICE official concluded that he was another member of Tren de Aragua, due to a single piece of “evidence” that U.S. law enforcement now deems valid to detain and deport Venezuelan nationals: again, five-point crowns in each of his wrists, with “mom” and “dad” written under them.

To enforce the Alien Enemies Act, the U.S. now uses a “points-based” system called the Alien Enemy Validation Guide to determine whether a Venezuelan national is a member of Tren de Aragua. This system works on various criteria that supposedly indicate TDA affiliation—some of which become increasingly stupid upon closer examination.

If an ICE officer determines that a suspect accumulates at least 8 points, they can be classified as a TDA member. But if the detainee scores 6 or 7 points, the ICE officer can consult with a supervisor and a Homeland Security attorney to decide if a Venezuelan can still be removed.

At the top of the checklist there are some pretty logical categories: the suspect will immediately score 10 points if he has been previously convicted of TDA-related activities, or if he identifies as a gang member. He will get 6 points if he has participated in criminal activity with other members of TDA, including “preparatory meetings” before a crime was committed.

Being a mule, money launderer or service provider for Tren de Aragua gets you 2 points, the same if a news article claims that you are affiliated.

But further down the list you’ll find some crazy categories through which you can be jailed without due process and sent to El Salvador, such as Symbolism and Documents and Communications. For example, paying a “known member” of TDA will get you 3 points, and having proven communications with one of them is enough to give you 6. So an individual who had a phone call and sent some money via Zelle to Diego Ibarra or Andry Hernández for any given reason—both of which were accused of being TDA gangsters on the grounds of their tattoos—can be declared a criminal.

The highlight of the checklist definitely concerns Symbols: presenting any “indicators” of TDA membership in your personal appearance or social media can make you accumulate multiple points.

That’s where the criteria gets absolutely bananas.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which is one of the enforcement agencies of ICE, claims that a combination of the following tattoos suggest TDA affiliation:

• “Jumpman” symbols that symbolize Michael Jordan, with the number #23 written next to them
• Quotes saying “real hasta la muerte” (“real until I die”), popularized by trap artist Anuel AA
• Skulls with gas masks
• AK-47 assault rifles
• Trains
• Crowns
• Stars
• Clocks

And according to the Chicago Field Office of HSI, the following are considered “additional identifiers”:

• Being a male aged between 18 and 25
• High-end urban street clothing
• Wearing Chicago Bulls and/or Michael Jordan apparel
• Wearing the sports apparel of an American sports team where Venezuelan athletes play 

Going back to the official ICE guide, a tattoo of any of those symbols gives you 4 points. And displaying them in any form —in social media, in clothes, or just possessing drawings or any kind of insignia—gives you another 4. This means that a person that has a Michael Jordan tattoo and wears a Chicago Bulls t-shirt (or worse, a Ronald Acuña Braves jersey) can score 8 and be sent to CECOT. A social media post with a “known member” of TDA, which we assume can be anyone currently labeled as “TDA” for presenting some of those characteristics, gets you 2 points also.

So now, if an American police officer watches a Venezuelan displaying admiration for a global icon like Michael Jordan, that could be enough to raise suspicions of ties to Tren de Aragua. That’s what codified U.S. security policy states. And it was a Chicago branch of ICE that reached this conclusion—in a city where countless people, including migrants from all over the world, are understandably obsessed with Jordan and the 1990s Bulls. It’s as absurd as if the Madrid branch of the Spanish Guardia Civil suggested that Mexicans wearing Cristiano Ronaldo jerseys and sporting Real Madrid tattoos were likely members of the Sinaloa Cartel.

We can go on and on about the absurdity of the “indicators” that these gringos have come up with. A tattooed quote of a famous reggaeton lyric can’t be considered proof of anything: it’s the most popular music genre in Latin America and the Caribbean (like it or not) and Anuel AA has tens of millions of followers. Sending money to people you don’t know, when you’re sorting things out and making ends meet in a foreign country, is an absolutely normal thing to do.

All of which begs the question: are these gringos drawing an absurd stereotype of Venezuelan nationals, based on our late exodus to the United States? It is somewhat ridiculous that the CNN piece about Diego Ibarra emphasizes his tattoos, his Chicago Bulls hat and jacket, and some silly hand gestures in social media posts (yes, “gang-related hand signs” are also being used by ICE to detain Venezuelans) to suggest a supposed TDA affiliation. Ibarra, like his brother of course, is a proven criminal, but for very different reasons.

Such elements of profiling, explicit in the ICE checklist and guidelines in the agency’s website—the Bulls, Jordan, being fond of Venezuelan athletes in the U.S., and having tattoos (something that shouldn’t be confused with any form of malandreo or gang culture)—suggest a cartoonish construction of criminals that oozes xenophobia, or at least ignorance. 

That does seem to be the case. It’s not just Ronna Rísquez pointing it out. For years, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have questioned the effectiveness of using tattoos to identify TDA members, according to internal documents obtained by USA Today. If you want to understand what Tren de Aragua is, read Ronna’s book and dismiss the bullshit spouted by the likes of Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi, who’ve probably never met a Venezuela-born person. They are more concerned with creating an internal enemy for Trump voters than explaining how Tren de Aragua actually operates and its links with the chavista state, something that Venezuelan and some Latin American journalists have excelled at.