A Venezuelan soccer player who was in the U.S. awaiting a ruling on his asylum claim was deported to El Salvador under suspicion of being a member of a dangerous gang in what his attorney said was a misinterpretation of a tattoo.
Agents who detained Jerce Reyes Barrios, 36, last September said his tattoo was "proof of gang membership," his attorney Linette Tobin wrote in a sworn statement this week. But the tattoo – a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word "Dios," which means God in Spanish – was designed to look like the logo for Reyes Barrios' favorite soccer team, Real Madrid, Tobin said.
Reyes Barrios was apparently one of the over 200 Venezuelan migrants swept up in the Trump administration's deportations under the Alien Enemies Act in a deal with El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele to hold the detainees at a notorious prison there. The deportations have kicked off a legal back-and-forth between the administration and a federal judge, while the government has refused to make public any evidence that the Venezuelans are affiliated with Tren de Aragua.
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