Like many Venezuelans of his generation, Franco José Caraballo Tiapa is a man of many tattoos.
There is one of a rose, one of a lion, and another – on the left side of the 26-year-old’s neck – of a razor blade that represents his work as a barber.
Two other tattoos pay tribute to Caraballo’s eldest daughter, Shalome: a pocket watch featuring the time of her birth and some black lettering on his chest that spells out the four-year-old’s name.
“He’s just a normal kid … he likes tattoos – that’s it,” said Martin Rosenow, a Florida-based attorney who represents the Venezuelan asylum seeker – one of scores shipped to El Salvador by the Trump administration last weekend as part of his hard-line immigration crackdown.
Caraballo’s fondness for body art may have been his undoing. For when the father of two was detained by US immigration officials in Dallas last month, they appear to have taken those tattoos as proof that he was a member of Venezuela’s most notorious gang, Tren de Aragua.
An official Department of Homeland Security document issued in early February and reviewed by the Guardian states: “[The] subject [Caraballo] has been identified as a Member/Active of Tren de Aragua” although it does not explain how agents reached that conclusion. The same document notes that Caraballo – who it calls a “Deportable/Excludable Alien” – has several tattoos and no known criminal history “at this time”.
Rosenow rejected the idea that the images inked on to his client’s skin indicated gang membership. “It’s sp...
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