Tattoos, Gangs, and Deportations
Tattoos are often part of cultural and racial identity and are frequently used to label Black people and Latinos as gang members
Recently, Pablo Manríquez at Migrant Insider broke a couple of stories about Venezuelan migrants being detained in Guantanamo. The migrants discussed in Pablo’s reporting do not appear to be gang members or criminals despite the administration’s claims that only gang members and violent criminals are being sent to Cuba. Neither had a criminal record and the justification for labeling them as gang members was based on some seemingly random tattoos.
Using tattoos to label people as gang members has been a tool of oppression employed by local, state, and federal law enforcement for decades. Since the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) under Bill Clinton, tattoos have become a weapon to target immigrants, legal or otherwise. Since then, the problem has only grown, as evidenced by the claim that a Venezuelan migrant with a Michael Jordan tattoo is a gang member.
There’s no question that some tattoos are gang-affiliated, especially when you see a giant MS-13 tattoo across someone’s chest. But a Michael Jordan tattoo is a stretch. As are tattoos resembling ancient art from native civilizations which many Latinos identify with and several migrants have been detained for.
This brings us to a 2023 report from the Washington Law Review titled, “Reifying Injustice: Using Culturally Specific Tattoos as a Marker of Gang Membership” (full report below), that covers the use of tattoos as markers to identify gangs and the inherent problems with doing so.
“The gang label has been so highly racialized that white people who self-identify as gang members are almost never categorized as “gang members” by law enforcement, while Black and Latino people who are not gang members are routinely labeled and targeted as if they were.”
Part of the report cites self-reported data – widely accepted among criminologists to be the most accurate – that indicates that roughly 40% of U.S. gang members are white. However, 99% of those listed in the New York Police Department’s gang database are reportedly Black and Latino; 96% of those listed in Chicago’s gang database are Latino or Black; 98% of those who have been sentenced to prison with gang sentencing enhancements in Los Angeles County are people of color. The disparity isn’t in just big cities either.
In Mississippi, the Association of Gang Investigators reported that 53% of the gang members in the state are white, but everyone arrested under the state’s gang law between 2010 and 2017 was Black. Numbers like these are harrowing and highlight the problematic nature of falsely labeling people as having gang affiliations. In today’s environment, it’s no longer about who you hang out with, it’s about what country you’re from coupled with random tattoos.
“Nationally, as of 2007, African Americans and Latinos were roughly 15 times more likely than non-Hispanic whites to be identified by the police as gang members. The evidence is abundantly clear that the gang label is disproportionately applied to people of color.”
Under the Trump administration, targeting Venezuelans is a top priority. If you’re Venezuelan with a tattoo of any kind, they’ll use both as an excuse to send you offshore to places like Guantanamo, and possibly El Salvador in the future. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are notorious for finding ways to justify deporting people. Making false claims while using tattoos or claiming a migrant is guilty by association with others are two of the more prominent methods.
CBP and ICE have been perfecting this method since the aftermath of 9/11. They’ve had more than two decades to learn how to manipulate the public. They essentially make claims without evidence, as they have with the cases here, and many media outlets report what they say as fact. The truth is, you never trust what police say, and that includes federal authorities. If the last several years taught us anything, they constantly lie.
“Nowhere are racially disparate impacts more pervasive than in the criminal justice and immigration systems of the United States. Black people are incarcerated at a rate of 2,306 per 100,000; Latino people at a rate of 831 per 100,000; and white people at a much lower rate of 450 per 100,000.”
The amount of money the Trump administration is spending on anti-immigrant propaganda to reinforce and justify mass deportations is beyond exorbitant. Making migrants appear as gang members is but one piece of that villainization. An authoritarian piece used to excuse the type of treatment Nayib Bukele popularized in El Salvador and Trump wants to embrace – ignoring human rights.
Sending migrants to other countries seemingly absolves the United States of reported human rights abuses but sending them to Guantanamo does not, regardless of whether the administration thinks it will. Migrants in Guantanamo still have rights protected under the Constitution and that they once were under the jurisdiction of U.S. law and were forcibly removed from those protections is a battle that will play out in the courts.
“In the immigration context, nearly all of the people the United States deports are Latino, and a disproportionate number are Black. Myriad policies, both formal and informal, overlap to create legal systems that systematically under-protect and over-criminalize Black and Latino people. And yet, the law allows these gross racial disparities to stand.”
Federal authorities, especially those with international implications such as the Department of Homeland Security, CBP, and ICE, using gang tattoo databases to falsely accuse people of being gang members highlights how interconnected strategies of oppression are and exposes just how much of society is victimized by using the criminal justice system as a weapon. It takes little effort on an agency's part. All they have to do is say it and suddenly, every time you hear “migrant” in the news it’s followed by “gang member” and something about Latin America.
In other words, Latinos. Before you know it, we’re all gang members.
On Sunday, a court blocked the Trump administration from sending three Venezuelan migrants detained in New Mexico to Guantanamo Bay. The question raised by the judge, in that case, was focused on the availability of the legal process and counsel. According to lawyers for the three men, they stand falsely accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela because of tattoos.
Immigrant Rights and Civil Rights groups, who are leading the charge against Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, have demanded access to migrants held in Cuba. (letter below).
Washington Law Review Report
Letter From Civil Rights Groups
I’m a freelance journalist. Find my work at Latino Rebels, Unicorn Riot, The Antagonist Magazine, and more. I’m also on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads. To support my work, become a paid subscriber or donate via Venmo, PayPal, or CashApp.
Those numbers are pretty damning ... Racism again 😔