Man Deported to Megaprison Was No Gang Member: Lawyer

The White House says the 200 Venezuelan citizens flown to El Salvador Saturday in defiance of a judge's order are part of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. But a lawyer for one of the men says he's actually an LGBTQ+ artist who sought refuge in the US after fleeing political persecution in Venezuela, that he has no criminal history, and that he was mistaken for a gang member due to his tattoos, which the Guardian describes as "benign." A number of relatives of deported men are similarly coming forward to insist their family members are not part of Tren de Aragua, NBC News reports.

• One is reportedly a man with an open asylum case and no criminal history. His relatives say he was also targeted because of innocent tattoos, one of them related to his love of recreational soccer.
• Another is reportedly a man who left Venezuela because he was being harassed and extorted by the armed paramilitary groups that support President Nicolás Maduro. He also had an open asylum case, and his family also believes his tattoos caused him to be targeted.
• Similar stories are easy to find in other news outlets. Meanwhile, an ICE official said, as part of court proceedings in the case, that the lack of criminal records for "many" of the deported men simply indicated they had not been in the US long enough to develop one, ABC News reports.

"This is the most shocking thing that I've ever seen happen to one of our clients," says the lawyer who spoke to the Guardian, who works for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) group. "I think it's designed to be part of their effort to end asylum in the United States." (More mass deportations stories.)