MAIQUETA: Lawyers and relatives of Venezuelans flown from the United States to a notorious jail in El Salvador believe the men were wrongly labelled gang members and terrorists because of their tattoos.

Jhon Chacin, a professional tattoo artist, has images of “a flower, a watch, an owl, skulls” and family members’ names etched onto his skin. Last October, the 35-year-old was arrested at the Mexican border for entering the United States illegally.

Then last weekend, after not hearing from him for several days, shocked family members spotted him in a video of shaved and chained prisoners at a maximum security prison in El Salvador. He was one of 238 men declared as a member of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua — a terrorist group under US law — and deported by US President Donald Trump.

“He doesn’t have a criminal record, he’d never been arrested,” Chacin’s sister Yuliana, who lives in Texas, said. She is convinced her brother was designated a gang member because of his body art.

At the US detention centre, before being deported, “ICE (immigration) agents told him he belonged to a criminal gang because he had a lot of tattoos.” In the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, family members of several other deportees denied their loved ones were criminals.

Twenty-­three-year-old Edwuar Herna­ndez Herrera, known to family and friends as Edward, left Venezuela in 2023. He made a fraught journey across the jungle-filled Darien Gap before reaching the United States, where he was detained.

He has four tattoos — his mother and daughter’s names, an owl on his forearm and ears of corn on his chest, according to his mother Yarelis Herrera.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2025