The Trump administration expelled a professional soccer player to El Salvador based on a tattoo that paid homage to the soccer club Real Madrid, his attorney said.
The soccer player fled Venezuela after protesting authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro — but now he’s one of several former U.S. migrants who haven’t contacted friends or attorneys in several days and are presumably being detained in an infamous Salvadoran prison.
Jerce Reyes Barrios was falsely identified as a gang member because of his tattoo, his lawyer said — echoing a claim that numerous lawyers and families of the expelled migrants have asserted in recent days. The tattoo was merely an homage to the soccer club Real Madrid, the lawyer said.
Over the weekend, the administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants and asylum-seekers to a brutal Salvadoran prison infamous for widespread human rights abuses. Many were sent to the prison under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act, a wartime proclamation that gives presidents the extraordinary power to jail and deport people deemed enemy combatants without due process.
The Trump administration asserts the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is actually a terrorist group and a wing of the Venezuelan state that is actively involved in an invasion of the United States. Deportations under the Alien Enemies Act were paused by a judge — but not before the administration expelled hundreds of people to El Salvador — in violation of the judge’s verbal order to divert planes back to the United States. The administration has been defiant of the judge for days, and it continues to call for an end to his restraining order on further flights to El Salvador.
In a filing arguing that the judge ought to keep his temporary restraining order in place, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt cited experts who detailed the shocking conditions in the Salvadoran prison system — full of allegations of torture, human rights abuses, and enforced disappearances. The filing noted “multiple” attorneys who had described clients “who were suddenly and without notice transferred to Texas, and removed to El Salvador despite upcoming asylum hearings and strong claims to that relief.”
“If the President can label any group as enemy aliens under the Act, and that designation is unreviewable, then there is no limit on who can be sent to a Salvadoran prison,” the filing argued.
Among those believed to have been expelled to El Salvador was Reyes Barrios.
In a sworn declaration filed in court Thursday, to accompany Gelernt’s filing, Reyes Barrios’ attorney Linette Tobin said Reyes Barrios fled Venezuela for the United States last year, after he was tortured with electric shocks and suffocation for protesting the authoritarian regime of the country’s leader, Maduro.
Reyes Barrios entered the United States, after making an appointment on the CBP One cellphone app and presenting himself to immigration officials. He’s applied for asylum and relief under the Convention Against Torture. Reyes Barrios had a hearing set for April 17, Tobin wrote.
While in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, Reyes Barrios was placed under maximum security and “accused of being a Tren de Aragua gang member,” Tobin wrote. The accusation was based on two things, she said: his tattoo, and a picture of Reyes Barrios’ on social media, in which he’s making a “Rock & Roll” hand gesture.
The tattoo, Reyes Barrios’ lawyer said, was benign. It shows a crown sitting atop a soccer ball and the word “Dios,” or “God.”
“DHS alleges that this tattoo is proof of gang membership. In reality, he chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favorite soccer team Real Madrid,” she wrote.
The evidence supporting Reyes Barrios’ claim that he’s not a gang member is significant: After submitting Venezuelan documents indicating he had no criminal record, several employment letters, and “a declaration from the tattoo artist who rendered the tattoo,” alongside several similar online images, Reyes Barrios was removed from maximum security detention at the facility where he was initially detained, his lawyer said.
“Nevertheless,” Tobin wrote, “on March 10th or 11th, he was transferred from Otay Mesa [Detention Facility] to Texas without notice.”
Then, she wrote, “he was deported to El Salvador. Counsel and Family have lost all contact with him and have no information regarding his whereabouts or condition.”
Trump administration officials did not immediately answer HuffPost’s questions about declarations from Reyes Barrios’ or other migrants’ attorneys.
Harrowing Declarations Describe Expulsion Without Due Process
Reyes Barrios’ story is one of many terrifying accounts of migrants in the United States seemingly being labeled as gang members — and potentially being sent to El Salvador’s brutal supermax prison known as CECOT without due process.
Among the other declarations filed in court Thursday, one man, identified by his attorney as JABV, was recognized by his brother in a video of expelled migrants being manhandled and sent to the prison. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a key Trump ally, posted the video and mocked the judge’s order that was meant to halt the flights carrying the expelled migrants.
JABV had no removal order at the time of his removal, his lawyer Osvaldo E. Caro-Cruz stated — an indication he was likely expelled under the Alien Enemies Act proclamation, which treats supposed Tren de Aragua gang members as an invading army. Like Reyes Barrios, JABV fled Venezuela due to political persecution, his lawyer said. Caro-Cruz said that while JABV was participating in peaceful campaign activity for an opposition leader, he was “violently abducted” and detained for several days, during which time he was tortured, deprived of food and assaulted. Caro-Cruz noted he had video of Venezuelan police raiding JABV’s home, “confirming that he was being actively persecuted by the Maduro regime due to his political opposition.”
After fleeing to the United States and pursuing asylum, a U.S. immigration document falsely accused JABV of being a gang member, the lawyer said. According to Caro-Cruz, that document stated: “Subject has gang-related tattoos which were photographed by [Customs and Border Protection Officer] Clesi. The tattoos are well-known tattoos that Tren de Aragua gang members tend to have. Subject denied being part of Tren de Aragua or any other gang.”
In fact, according to the attorney, the claims of gang affiliation are “entirely speculative and unsubstantiated.”
“His tattoos are a Rose, a Clock and a Crown with his son’s name on it. These are common in Venezuela and bear no exclusive association with gang affiliation,” he wrote, adding that his client had no criminal history in either Venezuela or the United States. He had a hearing schedule for April 7, Caro-Cruz said. Nonetheless, on March 16, he learned his client had been removed from the United States without any notice to his attorney or his family — a recurring theme in the declarations filed Thursday.
Caro-Cruz said he still had “not been informed” about his client’s whereabouts.
Another man, EV, was similarly imprisoned and tortured by the Venezuelan government after participating in an anti-government protest. He also does not have a removal order, his lawyer Austin Thierry wrote. Yet ICE alleged on immigration paperwork that EV’s tattoos “indicate he is a member of Tren de Aragua,” the lawyer recounted.
In fact, Thierry said, “EV has various tattoos, such as tattoos of anime, flowers, and animals, that he chose to get for personal and artistic reasons.” A crown tattoo that “may be why ICE falsely accused him of gang membership,” is actually a tribute to his grandmother, whose “date of death appears at the base of the crown,” the lawyer wrote.
Thierry said he didn’t know where EV was, but that he had not heard from him since the morning of March 15, when, like others who were expelled by the Trump administration to El Salvador, EV had been moved to El Valle Detention Facility in Raymondville, Texas.
One of the declarations Thursday was of the sister of a man believed to have been sent to El Savador. Solanyer Michell Sarabia Gonzalez wrote that she and her 19-year-old brother, Anyelo Jose Sarabia, are both asylum-seekers who arrived in the United States from Venezuela in 2023. Her brother was detained during a routine ICE check-in in January, she wrote, and “the officers asked me whether my brother belonged to a gang and about a tattoo that is visible on his hand.”
Her brother had never been part of any gang, she said. The tattoo on his hand shows a rose — and he got it in Arlington, Texas, last year “because he thought it looked cool.” Her brother has two other tattoos, she said — one that says “fuerza y valiente” (“strength and courage”) and another with a Bible verse. “I did both of these tattoos when my brother was in Texas,” she said, emphasizing that they also had no connection to any gang, and that her brother had no criminal record in either Venezuela or the United States.
Since he was removed to El Salvador, she said, she has not heard from him, even though they’d previously spoken almost daily during his U.S. detention. “I am extremely concerned about the health and safety of my little brother,” she wrote.
Another lawyer, Katherine Kim, described a prospective client, RB, whose family member recognized him in a photo of the migrants who’d been removed to El Salvador, despite him having no criminal record, no removal order, and a court date set for March 21.
RB’s family member “believes that the government has falsely accused him of membership in Tren de Aragua based on a single tattoo, which is of a flower.”
Thursday’s declarations also include several from lawyers for individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Trump administration — a handful of asylum-seekers in the United States who were seemingly set to be expelled to El Salvador, but were kept in the United States at the last minute after U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg halted their removals. This written order from Boasberg was separate from his verbal order in court Saturday that the government should turn any planes around that were on their way to El Salvador — the order the Trump administration defied.
In multiple declarations, several of the individual plaintiffs’ attorneys described their clients being sent in shackles from El Valle Detention Facility in Texas to a local airport. Once there, they were put on three planes — seemingly the same three planes that would later land in El Salvador. Like others, the lawyers emphasized that their clients had no gang affiliation.
But the handful of individual plaintiffs were spared — taken off the planes at the last minute.
The attorneys recounted that their clients all heard something similar from an ICE officer: that they did not know how lucky they were — that they had all “just won the lottery.”