Venezuelan LGBTQ+ artist ‘disappeared’ after being detained over his tattoos

An LGBTQ+ artist was ‘disappeared’ to Venezuela by US immigration officials because of his tattoos, his legal team have said.

The unnamed man in his 30s fled the South American country last year to escape persecution and had a ‘strong’ asylum claim.

He applied for asylum using an online government app, CBP One, but was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) because agents claimed his tattoos were ‘gang-related’.

Agents alleged he was part of Tren de Aragua, a transnational gang with roots in a Venezuelan prison at the centre of a wave of deportations by US President Donald Trump.

The administration did so in open defiance of a judge’s order against so in what one expert told Metro has all but ‘trampled the basic presumption of innocence’.

The young professional was transferred earlier this month from California to Texas, Lindsay Toczylowski, the founder and president of Immigrant Defenders Law Centre (ImmDef), said.

‘His tattoos are benign… ImmDef attorney planned to present evidence he is not. But never got the chance because our client has been disappeared,’ she said on X Sunday.

‘We last spoke to our client on Thursday before he was supposed to have a hearing in immigration court, but ICE didn’t bring him.’

Tren de Aragua members do not tend to wear tattoos to avoid easy identification, police officials have said.

After contacting the Texas facility where he was being held, Toczylowski was told that he had ‘disappeared from [the] online detainee locator’.

The term ‘disappeared’ is synonymous with what the UN calls ‘enforced disappearance’, or people removed by state officials who then deny it.

Toczylowski added yesterday that at a Monday hearing, ICE confirmed that the man had been ‘removed’ to El Salvador.

‘The judge asked, “How has he been removed if there is no removal order?” And the ICE attorney responded that they did not know,’ she said.

She added: ‘ICE told us today they won’t facilitate our communication with him or make him available for his next hearing.

‘Our client was falsely accused of gang affiliation, was given no chance to refute it, then was disappeared by ICE and sent to a prison in El Salvador. Before seeking asylum, he’d never even been incarcerated or arrested.

‘And now he sits in a prison notorious for human rights abuse.’

Toczylowski said that what has happened to her client captured ‘what the Alien Enemies Act looks like [in real life]’.

Trump invoked the centuries-old wartime authority to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants with alleged ties to Tren de Aragua this month.

The 1798 law gives the president sweeping authority to remove citizens of foreign countries whom he defines as ‘alien enemies’ in cases of war.

The arcane legislation empowers the Trump administration to arrest and remove people without providing court hearings or asylum screenings.

More than 260 people have been spirited away in the last two weeks – 137 under the Alien Enemies Act – even after a federal judge ordered Trump to halt the deportations.

Officials have disclosed next to no details on how the men were identified as gang members and what due process, if any, they were given.

‘The basic presumption of innocence underlying the US and every other democracy was just trampled,’ Adam Isacson, the director for defence oversight at WOLA, a human rights advocacy group in the Americas, told Metro.

‘We’re learning about people whose only offence was having run afoul of an ICE agent’s hunch about them – and they never had a chance to defend their good name.

Administration officials have denied that they are defying District Judge James Boasberg’s order, claiming the court has ‘no jurisdiction’ over the president’s conduct of foreign affairs.

His order, issued March 15, called on planes carrying Venezuelans to turn around. They did not, Isacson said, citing flight tracking data.

‘The US executive branch is now actively trying to resist the judicial branch’s constitutional check on its power,’ he said.

‘The term “constitutional crisis” is all over the national discussion right now.’

ICE has been approached for comment.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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