How The Trump Admin is Deciding Which Migrants Are Sent to Notorious El Salvador Prison

The ACLU has revealed the criteria used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to determine whether detainees are part of Venezuelan-born gang Tren de Aragua.

The document applies to undocumented migrants who are citizens of Venezuela and over 14 years old, and provides a series of guidelines to decide whether the person will be removed under the wartime Alien Enemies Act and sent to the infamous CECOT prison in El Salvador.

Those scoring between 6 and 7 points “may be validated as members of TDA,” while those scoring 8 and higher “are validated as members of TDA” and should be removed, the scorecard reads.

The scorecard has five different categories: Judicial outcomes and official documents, self-admission, criminal conduct and information, documents and communications, and symbolism.

Three sub-categories have 10 points, meaning those found to met the criteria will be immediately removed. They are: being convicted of violating Title 18, Section 521 or any other federal or state law criminalizing or imposing civil penalties for activity related to TDA, self-identifying as a member of the gang, even unwillingly, or having phone calls about TDA-related business with known members of the gang.

On the other end of the spectrum is “symbolism,” which includes social media posts displaying symbols of TDA or activity with known members of TDA, tagging or graffitiing to mark the territory of, and the subject’s allegiance to, TDA, as well as hand signs used by TDA.

Several deportees and their family members have challenged criteria used by U.S. authorities, with many claiming that tattoos used to justify deportations are just for aesthetic purposes. Moreover, the gang is not believed to have any identifiers.

One of them is Mirelys Casique, who said earlier this month that her deported son, Francisco García, is just a barber with no gang affiliations .”I ask that they have Interpol investigate him… so that they know he is not a criminal, he does not have a criminal background…send him back to his country,” she pleaded.

The Venezuelan mother told the New York Times that García’s only crime was crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2023. She also shared that her son was detained last year because of his tattoos. However, a judge let García go after ruling he was not a danger to society.

Trump border czar Tom Homan has rejected many arguments used, saying that “a lot of gang members don’t have criminal histories just like a lot of terrorists are not in any terrorist database.”

Trump officials have also linked the gang with authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro’s regime, with White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz saying that the “alien sedition act fully applies because we have also determined that this group is acting as a proxy of the Maduro regime.”

“Maduro is deliberately emptying his prisons in a proxy manner to influence an attack on the United States,” Waltz added.

However, he New York Times reported last week that a recent intelligence assessment contradicts that claim and concluded that is not the case. The assessment, which represents the consensus of multiple intelligence agencies, reportedly determined that the gang was neither directed by the Venezuelan government nor committing crimes in the United States on its behalf.