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The Trump administration has said that it would ship the worst of the worst criminal immigrants to the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On February 4, it flew the first group of 10 men there. The administration claimed all 10 were members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. But were they, in fact, gang members, or did they just look the part? NPR's Adrian Florido reports.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: On February 4, Peggy Paz was home in Venezuela when she saw the photos the Trump administration had posted of that first group of men headed to Guantanamo. She recognized her 25-year-old son. She posted this anguished video online.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PEGGY PAZ: (Speaking Spanish, crying).
FLORIDO: "He's never done anything wrong," she said. "The only bad thing he's ever done was get those tattoos I told him not to get." Court records show her son, Jhoan Bastidas, has no criminal record in the U.S., other than a 2023 charge for improper entry into the country, a misdemeanor. NPR recently called his mother at her home. She said her son had made the trek to the U.S.-Mexico border to request asylum in late 2023. He was being held at the federal detention center in El Paso, Texas. He often called his mom from there and told her his tattoos were being investigated.
PAZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: He had a lot of tattoos, including stars, the names of his family members, a portrait of his grandfather on his back, a dollar sign on his neck. His mother hated them. She says her son is a good young man, though, who worked in construction. But she also worried his tattoos might land him in trouble.
PAZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: "I said to him, before you get a tattoo, do you even find out what it means?" And he said, Mom, it's nothing. It's what's in fashion. Now she thinks his tattoos are the reason the government may have chosen him for Guantanamo. In photos, the Department of Homeland Security posted to X, the men being sent there are in shackles, about to be loaded onto a plane. Several have their neck tattoos prominently featured.
SUSAN PHILLIPS: They've got tattoos. They look scary. You know, they look like, oh, my God. Thank God.
FLORIDO: Susan Phillips teaches at Pitzer College and researches how tattoos are used to identify gang members. She often provides testimony in legal cases.
PHILLIPS: You know, you put anybody in shackles, you're going to make them look like a criminal, and that becomes how people contextualize their tattoos.
FLORIDO: It's unclear how the government ID'd these men as Tren de Aragua gang members. In an email to NPR, the Department of Homeland Security said only that, quote, "DHS has a broad intelligence assessment to determine gang affiliation." The families of several of the men have said the government had been scrutinizing their tattoos, and DHS has waffled on its initial claim that they're all members of Tren de Aragua.
When The New York Times asked about one of the men, DHS said it could not definitively determine if he was in fact a member of the gang. It then told the paper it had new information that he was but provided no evidence. Professor Susan Phillips worries these men could have been chosen for Guantanamo because their tattoos make them look like a stereotypical gang member.
PHILLIPS: They're being very clever about the optics of this, you know, using the way people look to identify, like, who are going to be the poster children for this deportation display.
FLORIDO: Peggy Paz says that last year, after her son, Jhoan, had already spent several months in the Texas detention center telling her his tattoos were being scrutinized, she began to wonder whether he'd ever be allowed into the U.S. to move ahead with his asylum claim.
PAZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: "My son, my heart," she said to him, "are there others who've been in there as long as you have?" And he said, yes, Mom. Eventually, though, his family says he got tired of waiting to be released and agreed to be deported. He was still waiting to be sent home when he was shipped to Guantanamo. The ACLU has sued the Department of Homeland Security to gain access to Bastidas and dozens of other migrants who have been sent to Guantanamo. Adrian Florido, NPR News.
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