US deports make-up artist to brutal mega-prison after tattoo mix-up

Andry José Hernández Romero has a tattoo of a crown on each of his wrists, with the words “Mom” and “Dad”.

The symbols refer to the annual El Día de los Reyes Magos (Three Kings Day), the epiphany festival celebrated in the Spanish-speaking world for which his Venezuelan home town is famed.

But to the US immigration officers who detained Mr Hernández and marched him onto a plane headed for a maximum security jail in El Salvador, the tattoos were proof enough he belonged to a deadly gang.

Mr Hernández, a gay professional make-up artist with no criminal record, is one of many caught up in Donald Trump’s extraordinary pursuit of illegal migrants.

Since the US president invoked a wartime law to rapidly deport members of criminal gangs such as Tren de Aragua, American immigration officials have been on the hunt for anyone with the crime group’s tattoos.

In their haste, however, they have misinterpreted not just symbols for religious festivals, but also dedications to dead grandparents and successful Spanish football clubs.

Family members of those taken away have been forced to comb through the slick propaganda videos posted by Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, for a glimpse of their loved ones.

Mr Bukele is a hardliner who has happily received Mr Trump’s prisoners in their dozens.

In videos from the prison which Mr Bukele calls a “terrorism confinement centre”, rows and rows of men peer out through cell doors, packed tightly together, with identical jumpsuits and newly shaved heads.

Alexis Dolores Romero de Hernández, Mr Hernández’s mother, implored officials to let her son go.

She said: “Review his case file. He is not a gang member. Everyone has these crowns, many people. But that doesn’t mean they’re involved in the Tren de Aragua… He’s never had problems with the law.”

Melissa Shepard, the US lawyer representing Mr Hernández, said that her “very sweet, kind and thoughtful” client had been caught up in the melee of an administration eager to prove a point and make good on a central election pledge.

The El Salvador operation is one of the most ambitious, and radical, attempts to tackle crime and immigration in recent history.

But glaring errors in who has been jailed have led even conservative opinion leaders and Trump supporters to raise concerns.

Joe Rogan, one of the world’s most listened-to podcasters and a prominent backer of Mr Trump’s election campaign, called Mr Hernandez’s case “horrific”.

“You’ve got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting lassoed up and deported and sent to El Salvador prisons,” he said.

His rare criticism is likely to concern the White House and Trump administration far more than wall-to-wall coverage on CNN.

David J Bier, an expert on border security and legal immigration, said tattoos were “astoundingly thin evidence of gang membership”, adding that “if it was ever presented to a court, it’d be laughed out”.

The Tren de Aragua gang does not in fact have a tattoo symbolising membership, according to Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist who has reported extensively on criminal groups in El Salvador.

“Tren de Aragua does not use any tattoos as a form of gang identification; no Venezuelan gang does,” she said.

In another case, a man who was deported was accused of having a crown tattoo that proved his gang membership, when in reality it was to honour his favourite football team, Spain’s Real Madrid.

In a third, a migrant had a crown tattoo to commemorate his late grandmother.

Nike clothes seen as ‘evidence’

Recently released court documents also suggest that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) relied on a scorecard-like system.

The documents showed that “high-end streetwear” and clothing associated with the basketball star Michael Jordan – including his number 23 jersey and Nike’s “jumpman” logo – had been used as “evidence” of gang membership among Venezuelan immigrants.

On March 15, Mr Trump signed an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act. It granted him sweeping authority to remove foreign citizens whom he defined as “alien enemies”, in cases of war or invasion.

A federal judge swiftly blocked its implementation, but two planes were already flying to El Salvador. Judge James E Boasberg ordered them to be turned around, but the administration ignored him.

Other immigration errors have been reported in recent days.

In a court document filed on Monday, the White House acknowledged that it had accidentally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident, to the El Salvador mega-prison, despite his protected legal status.

The government said: “Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error.”

Trump lawyers said the court had no ability to bring Mr Abrego Garcia back now that he was in Salvadorian custody.

Hours later, JD Vance defended the deportation of Mr Abrego Garcia in a post on X, formerly Twitter, arguing that he had “no legal right” to be in the US. The vice-president did not provide any evidence of this claim.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, criticised the reporting of deportation cases. She acknowledged a “clerical error” in the case of Mr Abrego Garcia but said outlets were focusing on the rights of the accused when they should be reporting on victims of gang violence.

“These are vicious criminals. This is a vicious gang,” she said. “I wish that the media would spend just a second of the same time you have spent trying to litigate each and every individual of this gang who has been deported from this country as the innocent Americans whose lives have been lost at the hands of these brutal criminals.

“We maintain our position and very strongly so,” she added.

ICE said it had made 32,809 arrests in Mr Trump’s first 50 days in office. That was a daily average of 656, up from 311 during the 12 months to September 30.

Such numbers, while higher than those seen during the Biden administration, are far from the promised mass deportations on which Mr Trump campaigned.

So far, the president has avoided the large-scale factory and office raids that characterised his first term and that of George W Bush, his Republican predecessor. But there have been scattered and smaller operations.

In Capacho, Mr Hernández’s home town, his mother has been joined by hundreds of other protestors calling for his safe return.

Miguel Chacón, the president of Capacho’s Three Kings Day foundation, said the “entire town” could vouch for the innocence of Mr Hernández.

Mr Chacón said: “Most Capacheros get crown tattoos, often adding the name of their father or mother. We have lots of people with these tattoos – it’s a tradition that began in 1917.”

“It’s not possible that in Capacho having a crown tattoo is a symbol of pride, but for him, it makes him a criminal.”