Check your closet
Popular Information reports on a Trump administration document outlining how its immigration enforcers decide who to deport to a Salvadoran hellhole:
The document, titled “ALIEN ENEMY VALIDATION GUIDE,” creates a point system to determine whether a Venezuelan over 14 years of age is a TDA member. Anyone scoring eight points or higher “are validated as members of TDA.” Those scoring six or seven can be deemed members of TDA depending on the “totality of the facts.”
Or someone can tell police you are TdA to get back at you. Or police can tell just by spotting your “Michael Jordan “Jumpman” tattoo or “high-end urban street wear” like a Jordan 23 jersey or high-tops.
Some of the scoring system is based on court records. For example, being found by a court to have violated “federal or state law…for activity related to TDA” is worth 10 points. Any court document “identifying the subject as a member of TDA” is worth five points.
But people can also be assigned points based on “Symbolism.” Someone with “tattoos denoting membership/loyalty to TDA” is assigned four points.
Got inked images of crowns, trains, stars, and clocks? Off to the gulag with you!
Under this criteria, LeBron James, who has a crown tattoo and, like many NBA players, dresses in high-end street wear before games, would be “validated” as a member of TDA. (James would be spared deportation to El Salvador because of his American citizenship.)
Other “symbols” that seem more specific fall apart under scrutiny. For example, the DHS document claims the tattoo “Real Hasta La Muerte,” which means “Till Death,” indicates allegiance to TDA. But “Real Hasta La Muerte” is the title of a popular album by Anuel, a Puerto Rican reggaeton artist.
That is why other federal government documents obtained by USA Today warn that tattoos are an unreliable way of determining gang allegiances. A 2023 document from U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s El Paso Sector Intelligence Unit notes that “Chicago Bulls attire, clocks, and rose tattoos are typically related to the Venezuelan culture and not a definite (indicator) of being a member or associate of [TDA].” No tattoo establishes membership in TDA because TDA “doesn’t require its members to get tattoos.”
Popular Information details cases with which readers may already be familiar.
If this approach seems comical, it is because Trump 2.0 hires only the best authoritarian know-nothings to do its bidding. Like DHS Secretary Kristi Noem:
A former spokesperson for DHS under the Biden administration responded to Noem’s video on X: “No American—Republican or Democrat—should accept DHS using [a Salvadoran prison] to sidestep the Constitution. Stripping due process is un-American, full stop. We don’t protect our country by abandoning the principles that define it. We’re better than this.”
Twenty-five-plus hours of video of Sen. Cory Booker condemning Trump policies says otherwise.
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