Julie Turkewitz
Appearances
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
Once someone gets eight points, they become a, quote, validated member of the gang and therefore an alien enemy who can be subject to this kind of deportation. And of course, we know that these folks are not just being deported, but also incarcerated.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
So this document instructs officials to give individuals two points if they are discovered to have lived with a member of the Tren del Agua. Two points for being photographed with a member of the group. Two points for using social media to display symbols, unclear what those are, of the gang.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And most important, the document instructs officials to give four points for having tattoos denoting membership in the Tren de Aragua. And another four points for displaying, quote, dress known to indicate allegiance to the gang. And that kind of dress includes high-end urban street wear, and it includes wearing sports gear from U.S. sports teams with prominent Venezuelans on them.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
So U.S. law enforcement has used tattoos in the past to identify members of a gang. And that is because there are some transnational gangs that have a presence in the United States, like MS-13, that use tattoos as identifiers of membership. You know, we've seen these sort of big MS-13 tattoos, right?
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And the Trump administration has made all kinds of claims about these individuals saying that they are members of this Venezuelan gang. But we found, for example, in the case of Aurelio Garcia, is that what the government is saying about the individuals that it is sending to El Salvador for incarceration is, doesn't always have a lot of evidence behind it.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
The problem is that a member of our team in Venezuela spoke with five different experts on the Tren de Aragua. These are people who have been working with this group for years. Police officials, academics, and a journalist who wrote a book about the Tren de Aragua. And all of them say... that Tren de Aragua does not use tattoos as a marker of membership.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And while there may be many gang members who have tattoos, there are also many young Venezuelan men who have tattoos.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
We spoke with families and a couple of lawyers for 30 of the men who were sent to El Salvador. And we found that at least 27 of them have tattoos. And these tattoos include names of family members, names of girlfriends and wives. And they also include... things like crowns, for example, and, you know, inspirational messages and,
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And what we found is that even though the Tren de Aragua doesn't use tattoos as a marker of membership, the government has a list of tattoos that it considers to be suspicious. And that includes, for example, that crown tattoo that I mentioned that is also sported by Lionel Messi, the famous soccer star.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
It also includes the sort of Michael Jordan jump man silhouette that, of course, was popularized by Nike and by the basketball star.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
So the government appears to have taken this not really very definitive criteria, having tattoos or having crown and jump man tattoos, and combining it with other not very definitive criteria, like wearing urban street wear, and used it to identify someone as a, quote, validated member of this gang.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
Absolutely. And the problem is that the sort of possible misidentification of people as gang members has dire consequences. These men are now in a prison. They have not had a court hearing. They have little or no access to lawyers or their families. And we know that the conditions in this prison... that they have been sent to are extremely harsh.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
This prison was built by the president of El Salvador to be sort of emblematic of his crackdown on terrible criminals in his own country. The head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, has said that these individuals are not being held in the same conditions. But we don't really know that because no one has been given full and free access to the prison.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And these folks, unlike when they were in US detention, now that they're in Salvador in prison, these individuals do not have access to a telephone or a messaging app or a way to communicate to the outside world what their lives are like on the inside. Do we have any sense how long they might be there?
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
When these men were initially sent to El Salvador, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, said that they would be in prison there for at least a year. And at the same time, he called that sentence, quote unquote, renewable.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
But what we've seen since is that Kristi Noem, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, has come out and said that she believes these individuals should be held in the prison for the rest of their lives.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And so it was important to kind of dig into who these people are and if they are, in fact, members of a gang, as the Trump administration says they are, because if that is not true, it opens up all kinds of Questions about who else could be identified with very little evidence as a member of a gang and sent to a prison in a foreign country for a year or years to come.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
Yeah, I think that that is absolutely a fair summary of the situation. And I think that it's really important to point out that what we have seen in the last couple of months is a dramatic decline in people arriving at the U.S. border.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
This is something that started under the Biden administration because of some of these sort of stricter policies that the administration put in place, among other factors. But it has really been sustained and has become very evident under the Trump administration. The messaging that the Trump administration is sending seems to have worked.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
The thing is, we just don't know how deep the collateral damage will be. We don't know what people are exposed to in this prison in El Salvador. We don't know if they'll get out ever.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And what my colleagues and I are learning from new reporting in the past few days is that there are additional people who are no longer showing up in this public database of migrants detained in the U.S., but who are not on the internal government list of migrants sent to El Salvador. Presumably the U.S. government knows where they are, but their families don't know where they are.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
We don't know where they are. They have essentially, for public purposes, been disappeared. Wow. And I think the concern of many people watching this play out is that the shift in policy runs deeper than just sending a couple of hundred people to a foreign prison.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And so there's this fundamental question as to whether what we're seeing here is the American people accept that they are willing to give up certain rights in order to tackle this problem and feel somehow safer in their own country.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
So right around the time that the Trump administration is sending these men to El Salvador, the administration's borders are Tom Homan comes out and says, these individuals are all members of the Tren de Aragua. Now, the Tren de Aragua is this Venezuelan gang that has morphed into a transnational criminal organization, but until recently was not really considered a big deal in the United States.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And then earlier this year, the Trump administration declares the Tren de Aragua to be a foreign terrorist organization that is working with the Venezuelan government in And not only that, but the administration says that this gang, in collaboration with the Venezuelan government, is perpetrating an invasion of the United States. Wow.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
Now, this is really debatable because we don't have evidence that this group has arrived in the United States in very large numbers. And whatever connection they might have with the Venezuelan government is not proven. Hmm.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
But what the Trump administration is doing is claiming that there is an invasion so that it can invoke this 18th century law called the Alien Enemies Act that allows the Trump administration to swiftly deport individuals who are part of a nation that has invaded the United States or is at war with the United States. Swiftly deport meaning like no due process, no time in court. Correct. Correct.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
Now, the Supreme Court, after the initial flights of 238 men went to El Salvador, said that, no, going forward, the Trump administration must allow some kind of due process to these men. It must notify these men that they are being targeted, that they've been identified as alien enemies, and it must allow them an opportunity to fight that claim before they're deported.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And then on Friday, the Trump administration announced They attempted to continue to send more individuals to El Salvador using the Alien Enemies Act. And the Supreme Court weighed in again and halted this effort and said, no, at this point, this is not permitted.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
To be very clear, the Trump administration is being extremely secretive about who has been sent to El Salvador and what evidence it has against them. The U.S. government and the Salvadoran government have refused to even release a list of who is currently incarcerated in El Salvador. But my colleague Hamed Alea Aziz was able to obtain the internal list. These names were initially reported by CBS.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And we ran them through databases. So we were doing background checks in Chile, in Colombia, in Peru. Now, I should note that it's very difficult to find criminal records from all over the world. There's no international public database that we could just search and use to excavate information. So is it possible that we missed something? Of course.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
But a team of us reporters and researchers dedicated weeks to understanding the criminal backgrounds of these individuals. Right. And of the 238 men sent to El Salvador, we were only able to find serious criminal accusations or convictions for 32 of them. What kind of serious crimes are we talking about? So, for example, we found one person with a murder conviction in Venezuela.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
We found another individual who is accused of kidnapping and drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in Chile. Someone who authorities... in Chile, do believe is a member of Tren de Aragua. We found others who had been accused of being involved in an attack in Chicago. And so we found some folks with some pretty serious criminal accusations or convictions.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
Absolutely. We found about two dozen people who had these much lower level offenses, right? Speeding in a school zone, trespassing, driving without permission. proper registration. But the vast majority of the people did not seem to have a criminal record beyond sometimes infractions related to their immigration cases.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
Well, that is a good question because it's important to point out that while in a minority, well, in a handful of cases, for example, this individual in Chile... We did find some evidence that maybe authorities believe they're trainder agua. For the vast majority of these people, we found no evidence that they have any connection to this violent Venezuelan gang.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
But as we spoke to families of many of the men on those planes, we started to find a few common traits that appear to have led them to be targets for deportation. One person who I spent a lot of time interacting speaking with his family is Arturo Suarez. Arturo left Venezuela in 2016.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
He had participated in anti-government protests in 2014, sort of calling for change in Venezuela, and eventually decided because of the political situation, because of the economic situation, to move to Colombia. Then he moved to Chile. In Chile, he meets his wife, another Venezuelan, a woman named Natalie. I spoke with Natalie this month. She told me a little bit about him.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
He, in Chile, worked installing these sort of large-scale refrigerators. But his real passion and what people really know him for, what his friends, his family know him for, is his music. And as a part of his sort of growing music career, he had a lot of tattoos.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
Some of them are sort of aspirational, inspirational. One of them is this hummingbird on his neck. And another is a phrase that his family sort of describes as emblematic of his outlook. And it says, the future is bright. Money is tight and eventually Natalie gets pregnant and they decide that Arturo is going to go to the United States. And the idea is that he's going to go to the United States.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
You know, in the worst case scenario, earning dollars. to sort of assist my growing family. Maybe my wife comes to join me. Maybe I go back to Chile. In the best case scenario, I meet all kinds of amazing producers.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And, you know, my career really takes off in the U.S., where there's really just an opportunity to become like a global superstar, as opposed to Chile, where you're sort of relegated to a much smaller stage. So how does he eventually get into the U.S. ? So he enters the country in September of 2024. He enters using this application called CBP1.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
This is this Biden era application that allowed people and many Venezuelans took advantage of this to present themselves at the U.S. border and essentially ask for the opportunity to come in and make a case that they should be able to stay. And actually, once Arturo gets into the country, he's starting to make some money.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And he and Natalie decide that eventually he's going to save up and he's going to go back to Chile. But he never gets the opportunity to make that trip back. Why? What happens? So on February 8th, he arrives at this house in Raleigh to film a music video. And that is where he is apprehended by immigration agents.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
He is sent to a detention center in Georgia. He's able to make phone calls. His wife Natalie is in touch with him. But after about a month in this detention facility, Arturo tells his wife...
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
that he actually wants to be deported, that he's ready to sort of have this nightmare be over and that it's way better to be back in Venezuela or back in Chile than to be in a detention center in the United States. And so on March 14th, he calls her and he tells her that he will probably be deported the next day.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
I've been told by American authorities that I am being sent back to Venezuela. Natalie... tells me that she's just so filled with relief. And he sends a text that night saying, I love you.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
But after that message is sent, about a day passes and Arturo is silent. He essentially disappears and Natalie starts to get really nervous. And on March 16th, when Arturo has not showed up in Venezuela, Natalie turns to Google and And on her phone, she types into this little search box, deportations to Venezuela.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
Sure. Myself and a large team of reporters and researchers at The Times really wanted to understand why who were the people sent to El Salvador and how they were identified. These are people who weren't just deported. They have also been incarcerated in a foreign country in a maximum security prison built for terrorists.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
And what pops up are these photos of Venezuelan men deported and incarcerated in El Salvador.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
Absolutely. She sees this photo with this sort of sea of men wearing these sort of white prison outfits on the ground, sort of hunched over in a sort of identical form. And... She zooms in, sees the hummingbird tattoo, and realizes that one of them is her husband.
The Daily
Trump Says They’re Foreign Gang Members. Are They?
So earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security issued a internal guideline called the Alien Enemy Validation Guide. And this guide gives us a window into how the Trump administration is identifying supposed members of the Tren de Aragua. This guide instructs officials to use a point system to grade suspected members of the gang.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
And earlier this month, my colleagues and I actually got to see the beginning of the strategy up close. Tell us a little bit about that. What happened? So on Wednesday night, my colleague Hamed received a tip that a group of recently arrived migrants in the United States were going to be deported to Panama.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
So I'm based here in Colombia and my photographer colleague and I, Federico Rios, decide we are going to get on a plane and try and track down the people who have recently been deported. We arrive in Panama. We hear from a source that the 300 or so people... are staying at a hotel in downtown Panama City called the Hotel Decapolis.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
You know, Google says it's a four-star hotel, sort of in a touristy commercial area. And we arrive at this hotel. It's a pretty nice place. There's a sushi bar in the lobby. Hmm. And we try to get in, but we eventually can't get further than the lobby. And the hotel staff tells us that that is because there are hundreds of recently arrived migrants staying in the hotel.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
I mean, we have this journalistic challenge because we are not permitted to get further than the lobby. And the deportees, they're not allowed to leave. So Federico and I leave the hotel and we discover something very interesting, which is that the Decapolis Hotel is a soaring glass tower.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
And so all of these people are essentially being held in glass boxes and we can see them from the sidewalk and we can see in the windows in this sort of glass tower that some people are speaking on the telephone. And so Federico has this idea, why don't we hold up a sign? And we write a sort of impromptu sign that says press across several pieces of white printer paper, as well as my phone number.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
And we essentially lay this sign out on the sidewalk, sit and wait for a phone call. all of a sudden, a whole bunch of people begin to appear. And one of those people is a man who we eventually learn is named Mr. Wang. He sees Federico's camera, he sees my notebook, and he sort of, you know, gets excited. And on his window, he writes China in toothpaste.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
And eventually we're able to connect over text message.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
But what I discover is that Mr. Wong doesn't speak English. And so he's sending us audio files using a translator app on his phone.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
And he tells us that officials have taken away his passport, his friends' passports, and most of his friends' cell phones.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
He says that there are hundreds of people in the hotel, that they have been isolated, that they don't have access to lawyers.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
Eventually, we learn from others that at least one migrant woman tried to commit suicide by taking pills. And we hear reports that at least one person has tried to escape and has broken his leg in the process. So it's pretty clear from Mr. Wong and from others that there is a lot of desperation.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
Yeah. Our team ends up making contact with an Iranian woman named Artemis.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
She's 27 years old and she's a convert to Christianity, which in Iran is punishable by death. And so she had decided to come to the United States and to claim asylum. She knows that Donald Trump is on a mission to deport migrants, but she doesn't think that that includes her because she has heard that the people who are being deported are criminals. And she thinks, I'm not a criminal.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
I'm an asylum seeker. I have documents showing that I converted to Christianity. And she thinks that that will be enough to help her seek asylum.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
So Artemis takes this long series of flights from Iran to Mexico. She pays some $3,000 to a smuggler to get her essentially over the wall and into the United States, where she is then apprehended by authorities.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
shackled, handcuffed, and the government tells her that they're putting her on a military plane. Then she arrives in Panama.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
So what the United States is saying is that these are people who are in the United States illegally, that these people do not have a valid case for asylum, and thus they should be deported. And Panama is the country that they have decided to deport them to. The government of Panama has said that as a favor, the government of Panama decided, OK, we can take some of the deportees.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
While it might seem like this is a detention, the government of Panama is describing the decision to hold these people in this hotel as a security measure to protect the migrants.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
So this group is detained in the hotel for about a week. And during the course of this week, this UN organization, the International Organization for Migration, is working inside the hotel with the Panamanian government. And they start to offer some of the migrants a trip home. They say, look, if you would like to go home to your country, we can help you. We will facilitate that.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
And about 170 of the 300 people agreed. sign these papers. But there's a group of people that says, no, it's dangerous for me to go home. I cannot go back to my country. And so those people, they're still in the hotel. And one night they get a knock on the door and it's Panamanian authorities and they're saying, pack your bags, you're leaving.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
And that includes Artemis, that includes a group of other Iranians that she is with. They're very scared and they're led downstairs, packed onto three different buses. They're not told anything about where they're going. An hour passes, two hours pass, three hours pass.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
And finally, the doors open and they find that it is morning and they are at a camp at the edge of this jungle called the Darien Gap.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
Yeah, so think of a sort of dirt expanse, a fence two to three meters high, surrounded by barbed wire. Mm-hmm. And Artemis and other people taken to this camp say they are given a stale piece of bread, a bottle of water, and they see these structures that look like shipping containers that they assume are going to be their shelters for the foreseeable future.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
So even though the conditions in this camp are very bad, Artemis is firm that she is not going to go back to Iran. She's told by an official there at the camp that there might be an option of applying for asylum in a different country that is not the U.S., But it's just really not clear. For now, this is her new home.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
So President Trump has this major challenge, which is that his administration wants to deport a lot of people and wants to deport them quickly. But there are some people from some countries that it is very difficult for the United States to send back to their homelands. For example, the U.S. does not have good relationships with some countries. And so this makes deportations hard.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
She's not returning to the United States. She is Panama's problem now. And Panama has to figure out what to do with her. And what we're seeing here is that the Trump administration wants to send a message to the world that it's not just... criminals who are going to be deported, but it's any migrant, any asylum seeker who shows up at the U.S. border asking for protection.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
And I think that this is exactly what President Trump wanted and it is exactly what many Americans wanted.
The Daily
Exporting America’s Immigration Problem
And so what the Trump administration has done in these past few weeks is convince other countries specifically countries in Central America to accept deportees who come from a totally different part of the world. Africa, Asia, the Middle East. And this is a crucial development that could allow the Trump administration to expand and speed up deportation.