Tattoos used by officials to identify and deport Venezuelan migrants
Advocates for Venezuelan migrants say immigration authorities are using tattoos to wrongfully tie them to the Tren de Aragua prison gang.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday is set to visit the Salvadoran mega-prison where the U.S. has sent hundreds of Venezuelans, accusing them of ties to gangs.
Noem’s three-day trip around the Americas begins at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, more commonly known as CECOT.
Noem and Salvadoran justice minister Gustavo Villatoro will tour the Central American nation’s largest prison, which can house up to 40,000 people with little access to the outside world. CECOT has become a flashpoint along President Donald Trump’s path to expel millions of migrants from the U.S. Trump also threatened to send people who vandalize Teslas to CECOT.
In mid-March, the administration flew 261 Venezuelans to El Salvador. Officials alleged they were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. As USA TODAY and other news outlets have reported, families, lawyers and advocates deny many of the men had any affiliation to the gang, which the Trump administration has designated as a foreign terrorist group.
Edited videos released by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a Trump ally who once called himself the “world’s coolest dictator,” depict faceless guards herding shackled men inside CECOT. The prison has become notorious for images of masses of shirtless, bald men covered in tattoos held in crowded cells as part of Bukele’s crackdown on gangs.
Bukele opened the prison to the U.S. for a cost of around $6 million to house deported Venezuelans. After her trip to CECOT, Noem plans to meet with Bukele.
“As always, we continue advancing in the fight against organized crime,” Bukele said on the social media site X after the first American planes arrived. “But this time, we are also helping our allies.”
The prison allows neither family visits nor recreation space. It’s located at the base of a volcano in a rural region southeast of the capital San Salvador.
CECOT is the centerpiece of Bukele’s anti-crime campaign that he credits with historic drops in homicides in El Salvador — from one of the highest homicide rates in the world to one of the lowest in the Americas. Human rights watchers have warned of widespread abuses in prisons and incarcerating people without due process.
On Thursday, Noem is scheduled to visit Colombia, where she will meet with President Gustavo Petro and senior officials. In late January, Petro issued fiery tweets after American military planes brought Colombian migrants in chains. Then Trump threatened tariffs. Petro instead encouraged undocumented Colombians to return home from the U.S.
Noem and President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo are set to meet in Mexico on Friday. To avert many of Trump’s tariffs, Sheinbaum Pardo has sought to meet Trump’s demands around drug trafficking and migration.
However, American trading partners face more tariffs, which Trump has promised will start on April 2.
Josh Meyer of USA TODAY contributed to this report.
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