Lawyers for some of the Venezuelan immigrants deported last weekend under a rarely invoked wartime statute are pushing back against the Trump administration’s contention that they are members of a violent criminal street gang.
In court papers filed late Wednesday night, the lawyers said that at least five of the immigrants who were flown without due process to El Salvador on Saturday were apprehended in part because they had tattoos that federal immigration agents claimed indicated ties to the gang, Tren de Aragua.
But the lawyers said that one of the men got his tattoo — of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball — because it resembled the logo of his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid. Another got a similar crown tattoo, the lawyers said, to honor the death of his grandmother.
A third immigrant was identified as being a member of the gang because of a tattoo on his left hand of a rose with paper money as its petals. But according to a sworn declaration filed by the man’s sister, the tattoo had no connection to a gang.
“He had that tattoo done in Aug. 2024 in Arlington, Tex., because he thought it looked cool,” the sister wrote.
The question of whether the deported Venezuelans actually have ties to Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization, could be raised at a hearing set for Friday in Federal District Court in Washington.