They were called gang members and deported. Families say their only crime was having tattoos

[djdeeds]

Yes but the problem is it’s ridiculously hard to immigrate here legally. It was super easy back in the day when the Irish and Italian and Germans came. So we need to have control over our border and people who come in but we need to make it easier to come legally.

"we need to make it easier to come" How much easier than an open door with zero vetting? it's been a fucking free for all !! The party had to end at some point - the ugly lights are on .. time to fuck off !!

 

[djdeeds]

....at the very least, know how to speak English and have an ID that wasn't printed on an Epson inkjet !

 

[mrln]

Yes but the problem is it’s ridiculously hard to immigrate here legally. It was super easy back in the day when the Irish and Italian and Germans came. So we need to have control over our border and people who come in but we need to make it easier to come legally.

and its ridiculously hard to migrate to other countries as well. why should we make it easy? as it is, its not so easy and everyone is doing it! but the easy part is over now. vetting has begun and deportations are real.
so your comment is moot.

 

[frank4477]

LA Times full article:

SAN SALVADOR — One is a former professional soccer player who, according to his lawyer, fled Venezuela after being tortured by the country’s authoritarian government.
View attachment 874252
The other, also from Venezuela, is a onetime shoe salesman and social media influencer who documented his journey from South America on TikTok.

Both were apparently among thousands of political asylum aspirants who entered the United States from Mexico legally via an immigration process scrapped by the Trump administration.

Both were detained, one in California, and deported. Now they are imprisoned in El Salvador, according to their families, who have been left in the dark about their fates in a penal system widely condemned for human rights abuses.

“This has been a torture for us, an injustice,” said Antonia Cristina Barrios de Reyes, mother of Jerce Egbunik Reyes Barrios, 36, the former professional goalkeeper. “My son is not a criminal.”

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The social media influencer is Nolberto Rafael Aguilar Rodríguez, 32. He initially fled to Colombia, Venezuela’s western neighbor, out of desperation, said his sister, Jennifer Aguilar.



“We’re campesinos, we come from the fields,” she said. “We left Venezuela because we were starving.”



Reyes Barrios and Aguilar were among 261 people — the vast majority Venezuelans — expelled to El Salvador last week after the Trump administration alleged that most were affiliated the Venezuela-based Tren de Araguagang, which President Trump has declared a terrorist group.

The evidence of gang membership cited by the government is typically flimsy to nonexistent, defense lawyers allege, and largely based on tattoos and social media postings.

Experts say the administration’s outsourcing of detained migrants to a nation with an infamously repressive prison system has no precedent.

In El Salvador, “the United States now has a tropical gulag,” said Regina Bateson, a political scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder. “The notion that the U.S. government is paying millions of dollars to another government to violate these people’s rights is horrifying.”
View attachment 874254
The El Salvador operation is part of a deal between the Trump administration and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Advocates have filed a federal lawsuit challenging Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act — a statute from 1798 previously only invoked during wartime — to expel most of the alleged Venezuelan gang members.

On Friday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., vowed to “get to the bottom” of whether the Trump administration defied his order to hold off on the deportations while lawsuits challenging the expulsions played out in court.

Many relatives of the deportees deny their kin have gang ties or a criminal record, saying they were simply searching for better lives or escaping persecution in their turbulent homeland, part of the exodus that has seen millions flee Venezuela.

“We have no idea what’s going to happen to Jerce,” said Jair Barrios, uncle of the soccer player. “We understand and respect the laws of each country; but at the same time, we ask that, please, let justice be done and truly innocent people be released.”

Reyes Barrios was detained at the Otay Mesa border post in California in September, according to a statement from his attorney, Linette Tobin, when he appeared for his appointment under the Biden administration program known as CBP One, which facilitated U.S. entry for prospective asylum applicants and others.

According to Tobin, he was mistakenly accused of Tren de Aragua affiliation based on an arm tattoo and a social media post in which he made a hand gesture that U.S. authorities called a gang sign.

The tattoo — a crown atop a soccer ball, with a rosary and the word “Díos” — is actually a homage to his favorite team, Real Madrid, Tobin wrote. The hand gesture is a popular sign language rendering of “I Love You,” the lawyer added.

Reyes Barrios participated in antigovernment demonstrations in Venezuela in February and March 2024, Tobin wrote, and was subsequently arrested and tortured, enduring electric shocks and suffocation. After his release, he fled for the United States and registered for CBP One while in Mexico.

Tobin portrayed Reyes Barrios as a law-abiding person who had never been charged with a crime and wrote that he had “a steady employment record as a soccer player, as well as a soccer coach for children and youth.”

Once in custody in California, Tobin wrote, Reyes Barrios applied for political asylum and other relief. A hearing had been set for April 17 at immigration court in Otay Mesa.

Reyes Barrios was deported to El Salvador on March 15.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, defended the government action.

Reyes Barrios was “not only in the United States illegally,” McLaughlin wrote on X, “but he has tattoos that are consistent with those indicating TdA [Tren de Aragua] membership. His own social media indicates he is a member of the vicious TdA gang.”

She added that “DHS intelligence assessments go beyond a single tattoo and we are confident in our findings.”

Reyes Barrios is a “respected person” in Venezuela, said his wife, Mariyen Araujo Sandoval, who has remained in Mexico with two of the couple’s four children.

“It’s unjust to criminalize someone because of a tattoo,” said Araujo, 32. She said she recognized her husband in the online videos of Venezuelans expelled to El Salvador.

Now dashed, she said, is her family’s dream of a reunion in the United States. She now hopes her for a reunion in Venezuela — if her husband can ever get out of El Salvador.

“I’m too scared to even try to go to the United States,” said Araujo, who noted that she also has a tattoo, of a rose. “I’d be afraid that they would separate me from my daughters and put me in jail.”



The Venezuelans dispatched to El Salvador have no legal recourse for appeal or release, attorneys say, and may face indefinite detention.

“There is, of course, no law, rule or judicial standard in El Salvador to outsource the prisons,” said José Marinero, a Salvadoran lawyer. “These people have ... no conviction, no debt to the Salvadoran justice system.”

Their predicament, activists say, highlights the erosion of democracy across the region, as well as the dramatic crackdown on migration pushed by Washington.

“There’s no real safe haven left,” said Michael Ahn Paarlberg, a political scientist who studies Latin America at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The Trump administration has acknowledged that many of those deported under the Alien Enemies Act have no criminal records in the United States. But the government says they may still pose a threat.

“We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua, which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who brokered the deal with Bukele, declared on X.

Critics say that Trump, like Bukele, invokes crime as an excuse for suspending civil liberties.

“They’re using these particularly vulnerable people as test cases,” said Paarlberg, who added that the message appears to be: “If we can deport people who don’t have criminal records, people who are fleeing a regime that pretty much everyone and the U.S. government agrees is authoritarian, then we can deport anyone.”

Bukele, a former advertising executive who labels himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” dispatched video crews to record the arrival of the Venezuelans, who were led off deportation planes in shackles and had their hair shorn.

“This is a performative act of cruelty ... to scare people into not coming, to scare people who are here without papers, to scare people away from protesting,” Paarlberg said.

News of the deportations has sent relatives of the expelled Venezuelans poring over videos and social media posts in an effort to determine if their loved ones were among those flown to El Salvador.

The names of the deported Venezuelans appeared on a list leaked to the media. Included was Aguilar, who garnered more than 40,000 followers as he documented his northbound trek from South America on TikTok. His feed included images from the treacherous Darien Gap, the dense jungle separating Colombia and Panama.

Jennifer Aguilar described her brother as a hard-working family man who fled Venezuela for Colombia in 2013. He has three children: an 11-year-old girl in Venezuela and a 4-year-old girl and boy, 2, in Colombia. Aguilar’s sister says he got his tattoo, of playing cards and dice, to cover up a scar on his forearm from an accident he had at age 16.
View attachment 874256
According to his sister, Aguilar made his way to Mexico and secured an appointment for U.S. entry via CBP One. On June 24, he posted a video of himself boarding a plane, apparently en route to the U.S.-Mexican border.

“Have faith in God,” he wrote in a caption. “Never put your head down. And trust yourself.”

Jennifer Aguilar said he got a job in a travel agency in the California border city of Calexico. For reasons that remain unclear, he was detained by U.S. immigration authorities late last year.

From Colombia, where she lives with her three daughters, Jennifer Aguilar has written about her brother’s plight on social media message and sent messages to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and to Bukele, the Salvadoran leader.
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Aguilar “has never been to prison in Venezuela or in Colombia,” she wrote to Bukele. “Believe me, if he was guilty I’d say: ‘Leave him there.’ Because we were taught to be honest and do good.”

“I’ve tried by all means ... to be Rafael’s voice,” said the sister, adding that she doesn’t know anyone in El Salvador. “If I could be there, I would. I’m deeply sorry that I can’t.”

El Salvador has rounded up and imprisoned some 85,000 people — the equivalent of 1.5% of the nation’s population — since March 2022, when Bukele declared a state of emergency that effectively suspended constitutional due process rights. The Venezuelans were dispatched to the infamous Center for Terrorism Confinement, the centerpiece of Bukele’s mass incarceration agenda.



Link: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-03-23/deportation-trump-venezuelans-el-salvador

Too bad, good bye… borders language culture

 

[wiggins]

So that means he can just be send to a mega prison in el Salvador even if he is not in a gang. To you the law schmaw. Who cares just arrest someone and treat them for a crime they didn’t commit. So rule of law you don’t care about?

they had tattoos... thus guilty.

 

[Lovinight]

LOL, most likely in the long run they will be better off. Anyone in denial of the fact that we are in the trenches of these psychopaths' New World Disorder really, I have no words, nor do I know where to begin, I'm sure cognitive dissonance is working overtime and I no longer have the patience to argue with non-believers at this point.

Anyway, they have made it quite clear all the predominantly European (white) countries are their main immediate targets for chaos, mayhem, and utter destruction. They were behind the creation of this great nation and its awesome military force because they wanted to use it to their advantage, which they have, and when they have used it for all it is worth, they plan to leave us in ruins and hopeless to ever rise again.

 

[Richard 1986]

99,9 % of them are criminals and they will die in jail !! Perhaps there is innocent so they have to prove they're clean ....

 

[GrizzlyRazorblades]

So that means he can just be send to a mega prison in el Salvador even if he is not in a gang. To you the law schmaw. Who cares just arrest someone and treat them for a crime they didn’t commit. So rule of law you don’t care about?

They are criminal if they are here illegally. How the fuck is that hard to understand? I challenge you to run past a Mexican border patrol agent and see what happens. Don't stop for him/her, just run like many of them did coming across, some even bowling over US border agents. Go! Do it!

 

[Solomon Kane]

So that means he can just be send to a mega prison in el Salvador even if he is not in a gang. To you the law schmaw. Who cares just arrest someone and treat them for a crime they didn’t commit. So rule of law you don’t care about?

Our justice system is going to be tested now. Let's see how our Bill of Rights will play out.
The first citizen sent illegally will have a gorgeous payout once they sue.

 

[GrizzlyRazorblades]

I am going to be racially and religously honest. The United States needs to vet who comes in, especially those from muslim countries and cartel-run governments. Muslims do not come here with the intent to assimilate to American culture, they come here expecting Americans to assimilate to muslim culture. Same with the cartels. They expect Americans to bow to their violent form of coercion. And where are all the Chinese that came in? If China will not take them back willingly, air drop them ten miles off China's coast into international waters. American deserve to have their culture uncontested by any influence.

 

[Damo0666™️]

So that means he can just be send to a mega prison in el Salvador even if he is not in a gang. To you the law schmaw. Who cares just arrest someone and treat them for a crime they didn’t commit. So rule of law you don’t care about?

They committed a crime, by entering the US ILLEGALLY, all these cunts need locking up, maybe then they will stop breaking the law 🤷‍♂️

 

[Chief Queef]

If they aren't affiliated with a gang and have gang related tattoos then they are a total fucking poser and deserve a very slow death. I can't stand gangsters but posers are just the absolute worst...

 

[mrln]

Our justice system is going to be tested now. Let's see how our Bill of Rights will play out.
The first citizen sent illegally will have a gorgeous payout once they sue.

not easy to do,sue the govt. sovereign immunity. generally means that the government cannot be sued without its consent. this means that a citizen cannot simply file a lawsuit against the government in court without first obtaining the government's permission. and good fucking luck with that!

 

[hedgerow]

send all illegal invader migrants back from where they came, and then have a ten year pause on all legal immigration

way too many foreigners here now, obviously concocted by some devilish people intent on destroying the US

everything must be in the English language as well...screw helping them in their own language

 

[dwdays]

 

[PetrusWayne98]

LA Times is not a reliable source.

 

[Christopher Hitchens]

"we need to make it easier to come" How much easier than an open door with zero vetting? it's been a fucking free for all !! The party had to end at some point - the ugly lights are on .. time to fuck off !!

We need to make is easier to come “LEGALLY”. People often say, as a point against the illegal immigrants, “my ancestors came legallly blah blah”. Yes when the waves of Italian and Irish and Eastern European Jewish and polish immigrants came around 1900 they came legally but it was ALOT easier to immigrate here legally back then. It’s WAY harder to do now. So we need to reform to make it easier so we can these get immigrants legally.

 

[Christopher Hitchens]

and its ridiculously hard to migrate to other countries as well. why should we make it easy? as it is, its not so easy and everyone is doing it! but the easy part is over now. vetting has begun and deportations are real.
so your comment is moot.

Because these people aren’t going to stop coming for one, and we need them to a certain extent. Our populations are aging in the west, we need new young people. We should work to legalize this so it can be regulated and so rule of law is respected instead of this game back forth between democrats and republics, using this issue to rile people up and get votes, and never actually doing the reform we so desperately need. Id be more ok with these deportation if Trump was also going to reform the immigration laws to give some these people a chance to come here legally. I will add that the real gang members and criminals he is deporting I have no problem with that and like that and I do think it’s a bit insane how in some places we don’t deport people we just release them back into the state.

 

[45cal1911]

We need to make is easier to come “LEGALLY”. People often say, as a point against the illegal immigrants, “my ancestors came legallly blah blah”. Yes when the waves of Italian and Irish and Eastern European Jewish and polish immigrants came around 1900 they came legally but it was ALOT easier to immigrate here legally back then. It’s WAY harder to do now. So we need to reform to make it easier so we can these get immigrants legally.

Four years of a Democrat Biden Administration wasn’t easy enough? Take your fucking meds Eric.

 

[Christopher Hitchens]

LA Times is not a reliable source.

Yes it is if you confirm it with other sources which you can.