Latest news with #MS-13:TheMakingofAmerica'sMostNotoriousGang
Boston Globe
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Kilmar Abrego García's tattoos do not prove MS-13 membership, experts say
In an interview with ABC News on Tuesday night, Trump again adamantly insisted that Abrego García is a gang member while referencing a photo circulated by his administration on social media that labels the tattoos on his four fingers with: 'M - S - 1 - 3.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'They looked, and on his knuckles he has 'MS-13,'' the president said in the interview. 'He had MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed. … It says MS13. … Go look at his hand, he had MS13. … He had MS as clear as you can be.' Advertisement A White House spokesperson did not respond to specific questions Wednesday about how the Trump administration determined Abrego García's tattoos were evidence of gang activity. Law enforcement officials interviewed by The Washington Post said that some of the figures on Abrego García's hand have been seen on gang members before, particularly the marijuana leaf, though that symbol is also widely popular among those not affiliated with a gang. One official has seen some of those symbols in a similar configuration, but none have seen the exact same four symbols solely in that configuration spelling out 'MS-13.' Advertisement Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of the lawyers representing the 29-year-old Abrego García, called the tattoos 'irrelevant.' Before Trump's social media posts, the government had never cited the tattoos as proof of gang affiliation, he said, and had never been found by any court to be a gang member. 'If the government believes they can use his tattoos to justify deporting him, then they should do what the law requires. Bring evidence to a judge and give Kilmar his day in court,' Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement. 'So far, that hasn't happened.' Steven Dudley, the co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime and author of the book 'MS-13: The Making of America's Most Notorious Gang,' said that the use of tattoos as displays of affinity and loyalty to the gang has dropped in recent decades after law enforcement officials seized on them to identify members. 'Younger members of the gang are far less likely to tattoo themselves, at least in any obvious manner,' Dudley said. Raymond Tierney, the top prosecutor in Suffolk County, New York - where the MS-13 clique Abrego García was accused of belonging to also allegedly operated - said he recalls explicit tattoos from the gang's members while prosecuting cases against them in the early 2010s. Gang leadership allowed and encouraged certain tattoos that were worn 'like a badge,' with certain acts qualifying members for certain tattoos, Tierney said. Advertisement But Tierney started to notice a shift in tattoos around 2018. 'The gang began to realize that law enforcement was using it as a means of identifying members,' he said. When President Nayib Bukele started his crackdown on MS-13 in El Salvador, 'the tattoos sort of evolved and became more clandestine,' Tierney said. Jeannette Aguilar, a psychologist and security researcher in El Salvador, said that a person's neighborhood - and a gang's territorial control of that neighborhood - remained a consistent factor in helping identify gang affiliation. The neighborhood in El Salvador where Abrego García lived as a child was under the influence of the Barrio 18 gang, a sworn enemy of MS-13. Death threats from that gang after his mother - whose pupusa shop they attempted to extort - shielded him from being recruited into its ranks, prompted Abrego García's family to send him to the United States when he was 16, according to testimony his attorney provided in an immigration court proceeding. He entered the country illegally around 2011. It would be 'very improbable,' Aguilar said, that he would join a rival gang once he arrived in the United States. But Abrego García did get tattoos on his hands and arms, which he said was only because he liked how they looked, according to his attorney, Lucia Curiel, who provided The Post notes from a conversation she conducted with her client in 2019 about the tattoos. Abrego García told his attorney he got a star on his elbow, saying, 'I like the Cowboys.' A heartbeat near his wrist came in 2018, the product of a since-ended relationship with a girl who had a matching tattoo. Advertisement The tattoo artist behind those pieces also filled in his left knuckles: a marijuana leaf, a smiley face, a cross and a skull, he told Curiel. 'I got the skull because I like it,' he said, according to Curiel. Curiel said he never described the tattoos as gang-related, nor did he suggest they carried any deeper meaning. In an interview with The Post, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Abrego García's wife, put it simply: 'He thought tattoos were cool.' The tattoos did not factor at all in the gang affiliation allegation made by the Prince George's County gang unit detective who was summoned to a Home Depot parking lot to question Abrego García and three other Latino men in their 20s after they were detained by another police officer. Abrego García has said he was at the parking lot frequented by day laborers in search of work and did not really know the other men. Ivan Mendez, the Prince George's police detective who made the allegation, cited Abrego García's clothing, including a Chicago Bulls cap, and information from unnamed confidential informant in his allegation. He did not check a box in his 'Gang Interview Field Sheet' that was reserved for tattoos as proof of gang ties. Mendez was later charged with misconduct for providing information to a sex worker he had hired about an investigation into the brothel that she ran. Of eight law enforcement officials or gang culture researchers interviewed by The Post, some said it could be plausible the symbols photographed on Abrego García's knuckle spell out MS-13. Leandro Paulino, a former corrections officer at Rikers Island in New York and founder of the International Law Enforcement Officers Association said that 'a tattoo alone cannot confirm gang affiliation. However, the specific positioning of the symbols and their meanings strongly suggest the MS-13 connection.' Advertisement Aguilar, the Salvadoran researcher and psychologist, also pointed to the facility where Abrego García was transferred after he was initially taken to the high-security Terrorism Confinement Center, which is reserved for El Salvador's most hardened gang members. The 'semi-open' Santa Ana penitentiary center where Abrego García is currently being held is specifically designated for inmates who are not gang members, Aguilar said. 'The government is contradicting itself by sending him to a place where no gang member would be admitted,' she said. Dudley, who has conducted nearly two decades of research on MS-13, said he has never seen Abrego Garcia's knuckle tattoos 'as a representation of membership' in the gang. He said he has also never seen those symbols in different orders used to represent the letters or numbers of the gang. But he warned that any discussion about the tattoos and their significance was missing the broader picture on Abrego García's case, which is centered on his right to due process and the fact that the Trump administration has admitted that it mistakenly violated an immigration judge's 2019 order that he not be deported to El Salvador. 'At the end of the day, we have fallen into their trap: You cannot determine gang affiliation by tattoos alone, but this is what we are left debating,' Dudley said about the Trump administration. Gang affiliation does not cancel out the need for due process, he said, 'and we are not even talking about that.'
Time of India
01-05-2025
- Time of India
Donald Trump vs Ink: Do Kilmar Abrego Garcia's tattoos prove he is an MS-13 member?
Ábrego García, 29, came to the US from El Salvador illegally around 2011 President Donald Trump has pointed to four tattoos on Kilmar Abrego García's knuckles — a marijuana leaf, a smiley face, a cross, and a skull — as definitive proof that the Maryland man is an MS-13 gang member who should not be allowed back into the United States. But law enforcement officials, gang researchers, and Abrego García's attorneys argue that the tattoos do not confirm any gang affiliation — and were never considered evidence in court or immigration proceedings. Experts have also noted that the use of tattoos as gang identifiers has been in decline for years, particularly within MS-13. John Colello, homicide chief for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, where MS-13 originated in the 1980s, said that a tattoo alone, without additional context, could not serve as the sole basis to determine gang membership. Trump reiterated his tattoo claim during an interview with ABC News on Tuesday, urging the public to look at Abrego García's hand and asserting that it was 'clear as can be' that he was MS-13. His administration also circulated an image online falsely alleging that the tattoos spelled out "M-S-1-3." However, experts interviewed by The Washington Post dismissed the claim. While a few acknowledged having seen individual elements like a marijuana leaf on gang members before, none recognised the full combination or arrangement as indicative of MS-13. Steven Dudley, co-director of InSight Crime and author of MS-13: The Making of America's Most Notorious Gang, stated that the pattern was not known and argued that focusing on it missed the broader issue. He stressed that tattoos alone could not determine gang affiliation and, even if they could, such assumptions did not negate someone's right to due process. An Arrest Built on Thin Evidence Abrego García was detained in 2019 in a Home Depot parking lot in Maryland, where he and three other Latino men had gathered looking for work. The arrest began with a local officer and escalated when a gang detective, Ivan Mendez, identified García as a possible MS-13 member. Mendez reportedly based this assessment on García's clothing — including a Chicago Bulls cap — and unnamed informants. Tattoos were not mentioned as part of this evaluation. Mendez would later face misconduct charges in an unrelated case, including allegations that he provided investigative information to a sex worker. Although an immigration judge in 2019 ordered that Abrego García not be deported, the Trump administration violated that directive and sent him back to El Salvador. His case has since become central to a legal and political standoff over whether the US must repatriate him. 'He Thought Tattoos Were Cool' According to his attorneys, Abrego García never implied that his tattoos had any gang significance. In 2019, he told his lawyer that the tattoos were chosen for personal reasons — a star on his elbow to represent the Dallas Cowboys, a heartbeat design near his wrist that matched a former girlfriend's tattoo, and the knuckle images simply because he liked how they looked. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, told The Post that he thought tattoos were 'cool.' His attorney, Lucia Curiel, indicated that the tattoos were not even brought up in court until Trump began citing them publicly. Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, another lawyer on the case, said the tattoos were irrelevant — and remained so. Experts: Tattoos Don't Equal Guilt Experts have consistently warned that drawing conclusions about gang affiliation based on body art is flawed and outdated. They note that MS-13 members, especially younger ones, have increasingly avoided tattoos to escape detection. Suffolk County prosecutor Raymond Tierney, who has handled MS-13 cases since the early 2010s, explained that tattooing has become less common and more discreet. Jeannette Aguilar, a security analyst based in El Salvador, highlighted a deeper contradiction in the government's claim. After being deported to El Salvador, Abrego García was initially held at the country's infamous Terrorism Confinement Center. But he was later transferred to Santa Ana — a semi-open penitentiary specifically for inmates without gang affiliations. Aguilar remarked that if Abrego García truly were a member of MS-13, he would never have been placed in that facility. She also pointed out that the Salvadoran neighbourhood where he grew up was under the control of Barrio 18, a rival gang to MS-13. His family, she noted, had fled to the US to escape threats from Barrio 18, making it all the more unlikely that he would join MS-13 after arriving in the US. A Manufactured Crisis Despite this, some Trump supporters have continued to defend the tattoo narrative. Former corrections officer Leandro Paulino speculated that the skull could be a symbolic reference to the number '3,' since cráneo begins with the third letter of the Spanish alphabet. However, others — including writer Roberto Lovato — contacted current and former gang members and found no one who identified the symbols as MS-13 codes. Dudley criticised the administration's focus on tattoos, saying it distracted from the more pressing issue: the government deported someone in direct violation of a judge's order. Regardless of whether Abrego García has any gang ties — and no court has established that he does — he was entitled to legal due process. Instead, his case has become a political spectacle, his life suspended between Washington, a Salvadoran prison, and a White House intent on defending its immigration crackdown.
Washington Post
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Kilmar Abrego García's tattoos do not prove MS-13 membership, experts say
As the legal battle continues over the fate of Kilmar Abrego García, President Donald Trump has repeatedly cited tattoos on the mistakenly deported man's knuckles as proof that he is an MS-13 gang member and should not be returned from El Salvador. But several law enforcement officials and researchers who study the transnational gang say the tattoos on Abrego García's left hand — a marijuana leaf, a smiley face, a cross and a skull — do not show definitive evidence of any gang affiliation. 'A tattoo alone, with nothing more, cannot be the single basis to opine someone is a gang member,' said John Colello, who oversees the homicide division for the district attorney's office in Los Angeles County, where MS-13 got its start during the 1980s. In an interview with ABC News on Tuesday night, Trump again adamantly insisted that Abrego García is a gang member while referencing a photo circulated by his administration on social media that labels the tattoos on his four fingers with: 'M — S — 1 — 3.' 'They looked, and on his knuckles he has 'MS-13,'' the president said in the interview. 'He had MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed. … It says MS13. … Go look at his hand, he had MS13. … He had MS as clear as you can be.' A White House spokesperson did not respond to specific questions Wednesday about how the Trump administration determined Abrego García's tattoos were evidence of gang activity. Law enforcement officials interviewed by The Washington Post said that some of the figures on Abrego García's hand have been seen on gang members before, particularly the marijuana leaf, though that symbol is also widely popular among those not affiliated with a gang. One official has seen some of those symbols in a similar configuration, but none have seen the exact same four symbols solely in that configuration spelling out 'MS-13.' Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of the lawyers representing the 29-year-old Abrego García, called the tattoos 'irrelevant.' Before Trump's social media posts, the government had never cited the tattoos as proof of gang affiliation, he said, and had never been found by any court to be a gang member. 'If the government believes they can use his tattoos to justify deporting him, then they should do what the law requires. Bring evidence to a judge and give Kilmar his day in court,' Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement. 'So far, that hasn't happened.' Steven Dudley, the co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime and author of the book 'MS-13: The Making of America's Most Notorious Gang,' said that the use of tattoos as displays of affinity and loyalty to the gang has dropped in recent decades after law enforcement officials seized on them to identify members. 'Younger members of the gang are far less likely to tattoo themselves, at least in any obvious manner,' Dudley said. Raymond Tierney, the top prosecutor in Suffolk County, New York — where the MS-13 clique Abrego García was accused of belonging to also allegedly operated — said he recalls explicit tattoos from the gang's members while prosecuting cases against them in the early 2010s. Gang leadership allowed and encouraged certain tattoos that were worn 'like a badge,' with certain acts qualifying members for certain tattoos, Tierney said. But Tierney, started to notice a shift in tattoos around 2018. 'The gang began to realize that law enforcement was using it as a means of identifying members,' he said. When President Nayib Bukele started his crackdown on MS-13 in El Salvador, 'the tattoos sort of evolved and became more clandestine,' Tierney said. Jeannette Aguilar, a psychologist and security researcher in El Salvador, said that a person's neighborhood — and a gang's territorial control of that neighborhood — remained a consistent factor in helping identify gang affiliation. The neighborhood in El Salvador where Abrego García lived as a child was under the influence of the Barrio 18 gang, a sworn enemy of MS-13. Death threats from that gang after his mother — whose pupusa shop they attempted to extort — shielded him from being recruited into its ranks, prompted Abrego García's family to send him to the United States when he was 16, according to testimony his attorney provided in an immigration court proceeding. He entered the country illegally around 2011. It would be 'very improbable,' Aguilar said, that he would join a rival gang once he arrived in the U.S. But Abrego García did get tattoos on his hands and arms, which he said was only because he liked how they looked, according to his attorney, Lucia Curiel, who provided The Post notes from a conversation she conducted with her client in 2019 about the tattoos. Abrego García told his attorney he got a star on his elbow, saying, 'I like the Cowboys.' A heartbeat near his wrist came in 2018, the product of a since-ended relationship with a girl who had a matching tattoo. The tattoo artist behind those pieces also filled in his left knuckles: a marijuana leaf, a smiley face, a cross and a skull, he told Curiel. 'I got the skull because I like it,' he said, according to Curiel. Curiel said he never described the tattoos as gang-related, nor did he suggest they carried any deeper meaning. In an interview with The Post, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Abrego García's wife, put it simply: 'He thought tattoos were cool.' The tattoos did not factor at all in the gang affiliation allegation made by the Prince George's County gang unit detective who was summoned to a Home Depot parking lot to question Abrego García and three other Latino men in their 20s after they were detained by another police officer. Abrego García has said he was at the parking lot frequented by day laborers in search of work and did not really know the other men. Ivan Mendez, the Prince George's police detective who made the allegation, cited Abrego García's clothing, including a Chicago Bulls cap, and information from unnamed confidential informant in his allegation. He did not check a box in his 'Gang Interview Field Sheet' that was reserved for tattoos as proof of gang ties. Mendez was later charged with misconduct for providing information to a sex worker he had hired about an investigation into the brothel that she ran. Of eight law enforcement officials or gang culture researchers interviewed by The Post, some said it could be plausible the symbols photographed on Abrego García's knuckle spell out MS-13. Leandro Paulino, a former corrections officer at Rikers Island in New York and founder of the International Law Enforcement Officers Association said that 'a tattoo alone cannot confirm gang affiliation. However, the specific positioning of the symbols and their meanings strongly suggest the MS-13 connection.' Aguilar, the Salvadoran researcher and psychologist, also pointed to the facility where Abrego García was transferred after he was initially taken to the high-security Terrorism Confinement Center, which is reserved for El Salvador's most hardened gang members. The 'semi-open' Santa Ana penitentiary center where Abrego García is currently being held is specifically designated for inmates who are not gang members, Aguilar said. 'The government is contradicting itself by sending him to a place where no gang member would be admitted,' she said. Dudley, who has conducted nearly two decades of research on MS-13, said he has never seen Abrego Garcia's knuckle tattoos 'as a representation of membership' in the gang. He said he has also never seen those symbols in different orders used to represent the letters or numbers of the gang. But he warned that any discussion about the tattoos and their significance was missing the broader picture on Abrego García's case, which is centered on his right to due process and the fact that the Trump administration has admitted that it mistakenly violated an immigration judge's 2019 order that he not be deported to El Salvador. 'At the end of the day, we have fallen into their trap: You cannot determine gang affiliation by tattoos alone, but this is what we are left debating,' Dudley said about the Trump administration. Gang affiliation does not cancel out the need for due process, he said, 'and we are not even talking about that.'
