A rose. A lion. A crown over a soccer ball. In 2025, these tattoos became the basis for mass deportations.

Hundreds of Venezuelan migrants were labeled members of Tren de Aragua — a criminal gang originating in South America — and expelled from the United States. The only “evidence”? Body art.

U.S. immigration authorities are increasingly treating tattoos as criminal confessions — reducing complex lives to a patch of ink. But Tren de Aragua has no fixed tattoo culture. And the designs being cited — religious symbols, family names, pop culture references — are common across Latin communities.

In this piece, I break down how tattoo profiling became embedded in U.S. law enforcement, why it's dangerously unreliable, and how it's now being used to exile people without trials, charges, or context.