Tattoos, flyers and deleted photos: The limited evidence the Trump administration is using to try to deport migrants

(CNN) — Tattoos. Pro-Hamas flyers. Deleted photos.

These are just a few of the pieces of evidence that the Trump administration has cited in its legal efforts to detain and deport migrants from the United States in high-profile actions the past few weeks.

The evidence has been cited in efforts to send over 200 Venezuelan men to prison in El Salvador for alleged gang membership, to detain a pro-Palestinian activist and green card holder without charging him with any crime, and to deport a doctor with a visa to Lebanon.

People in immigration court already face a lower standard of due process in proceedings, but the Trump administration’s moves reflect a stark deterioration of migrant civil liberties even further, immigration attorneys said.

“In this instance under the Trump administration, what we’re seeing is yes, allegations using flimsy evidence paired with no meaningful opportunity to refute that evidence in any kind of proceeding before any kind of decision-maker,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director of the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration non-profit group. “That’s really what makes this different.”

The administration’s quick pace of detention and deportation has similarly disoriented attorneys.

“Every day we’re hit with a different decision, and we just don’t know how to make sense of it,” Veronica Cardenas, the former assistant chief counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, told CNN last week. “Us immigration lawyers are really experiencing the lack of due process circumventing immigration courts, and so it’s been a very difficult time.”

The Trump administration has pushed back against critics who raised concerns about immigrants’ legal rights.

“Due process? What was Laken Riley’s due process?” border czar Tom Homan said on ABC’s “This Week,” referring to the nursing student who was killed by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela. “What were all these young women that were killed and raped by members of (Tren de Aragua) – what was their due process?”

Here’s a closer look at some of the evidence being cited in the cases and what attorneys and family members of the migrants have said about its relevance.

A closer look at the tattoo evidence

The Trump administration deported over 230 Venezuelans earlier this month, sending them to prison in El Salvador for alleged gang membership. But some have said they were wrongly suspected due to their tattoos.

The Texas Department of Public Safety last year identified an assortment of tattoos connected to Tren de Aragua, many relatively common: stars on the shoulder, royal crowns, firearms, trains, dice, roses, tigers and jaguars. A photo collage of the tattoos even includes a Nike “Jumpman” logo and Michael Jordan’s number 23 jersey number as an identifier of gang membership.

José Daniel Simancas Rodríguez, who spent 15 days in detention at Guantanamo Bay before being deported back to Venezuela, told CNN that US authorities had suspected him because of his tattoos and because he was from the gang’s original stomping grounds in Maracay. He denies being in the gang.

A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Trump administration related to its deportation efforts tells the story of “J.G.G.,” a non-citizen from Venezuela and tattoo artist who has requested asylum. J.G.G. has several tattoos on his leg, and that ink that made him the target of deportation efforts, according to the suit.

The ACLU said that J.G.G. has two tattoos – a rose and skull on his leg as well as an eye with a clock in it – and neither are associated with Tren de Aragua.

“During an interview with ICE, he was detained because the officer erroneously suspected that J.G.G. was a Tren de Aragua member on account of his tattoos,” the suit states.

Lindsay Toczylowski, the co-founder and president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, is representing a Venezuelan asylum seeker who they say was abruptly removed to El Salvador.

“He came here seeking protection, seeking asylum, and because of his tattoos – which are the type of tattoos you would see on any person hanging out in a coffee shop in (Los Angeles) – because of those tattoos, he’s in a labor prison in El Salvador known for human rights abuse,” Toczylowski said.

Trump admin defends deportations

The deportations stem from President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, an obscure 18th century law that has only been invoked three times in US history, all during major military conflicts.

Detentions and deportations that occur under the measure do not go through the immigration court system, which provides immigrants the chance to seek relief and make their case to stay in the country.

The US recently designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization, and officials have claimed the country is under “invasion” by the gang to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. CNN previously reported that more than half of the 261 migrants expelled to El Salvador were done under the Alien Enemies Act.

The administration has not publicly identified those removed to El Salvador, or presented evidence that the deported Venezuelans belong to Tren de Aragua. CNN has not been able to confirm whether any of the deported migrants identified in this story have any affiliation to the gang.

“We are not going to reveal operational details about a counter terrorism operation,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. She added that ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents had “great evidence.”

“They were 100% confident in the individuals that were sent home on these flights and in the president’s executive authority to do that,” Leavitt said.

The administration has argued in court the migrants sent to El Salvador were “carefully vetted” through investigative techniques and a review of information to ensure they were members of Tren de Aragua, according to a court declaration submitted last week from an agency official.

Robert Cerna, acting field office director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, argued that the agency “did not simply rely on social media posts, photographs of the alien displaying gang-related hand gestures, or tattoos alone.”

ICE also looked at previous criminal convictions, testimonies and interviews with known Tren de Aragua members, according to the filing.

“Members of TdA pose an extraordinary threat to the American public. TdA members are involved in illicit activity to invoke fear and supremacy in neighborhoods and with the general population,” the filing states.

The flyers and ‘misrepresentation’ evidence

Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian activist, was arrested by immigration officers nearly three weeks ago outside of his apartment on the campus of Columbia University. A legal permanent US resident and green card holder, he played a central role in protests against the Israel-Hamas war on the Ivy League campus last year.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered Khalil’s detention, relying on an obscure section of US law which gives him wide authority to revoke a person’s immigration status if their “activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” to the country.

Leavitt, the White House press secretary, accused Khalil of organizing protests that “distributed pro-Hamas propaganda, flyers with the logo of Hamas,” a claim his attorneys have denied. During the briefing, she said she had a copy of the flyer but did not present it.

Khalil has not been charged with any crime since he has been detained.

Khalil described himself as a “political prisoner” in a letter dictated to his attorneys from inside the ICE detention facility. “My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza,” Khalil said.

In a court filing Sunday, the Trump administration said that his deportation is justified because Khalil did not reveal his previous work at the Syria office of the British Embassy in Beirut or his membership in United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East in his application to become a permanent US resident.

Khalil “sought to procure an immigration benefit by fraud of willful misrepresentation of a material fact,” the US government wrote.

Khalil was an unpaid intern with UNRWA in 2023, but was never on staff, spokesperson Juliette Touma told CNN.

His defense attorneys argue the new justification to deport him is weak and doesn’t “cure the obvious taint of retaliation.”

“It’s a recognition that the initial charges are unsustainable,” attorney Baher Azmy told CNN. “So, they’re going with a theory that they must think is more legally defensible.”

The deleted photos

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, was deported last week from Boston to her native Lebanon after federal agents found photos of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s supreme leader on her cell phone, a court filing by the Trump administration said.

It was not immediately clear why federal officers were examining her phone.

“In explaining why these multiple photos were deleted by her one to two days before she arrived at Logan Airport, Dr. Alawieh stated that she did not want to give authorities the perception that she supports Hezbollah and the Ayatollah politically or militarily,” the court filing reads, per CNN affiliate WCVB.

Alawieh, who attended Nasrallah’s funeral in Lebanon, described him as a highly regarded religious leader and told them she follows his religious and spiritual techniques but not his politics, a source familiar with the case told CNN.

“Alawieh openly admitted to this to CBP officers, as well as her support of Nasrallah,” a spokesperson for the DHS said in a statement. Alawieh also acknowledged to immigration officers Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, a source familiar with the case told CNN.

Alawieh’s attorney, Stephanie Marzouk, who told the court all Alawieh’s other attorneys had withdrawn from the case, spoke briefly to reporters last week outside a federal courthouse in Boston.

“Our client is in Lebanon, and we’re not going to stop fighting to get her back in the US to see her patients, and we’re also going to make sure that the government follows the rule of law,” she said.

The groundwork to deport these people did not just begin with Trump. DHS has a long history of using “flimsy or unsubstantiated” allegations to deport people in the immigration system, said Gupta, the American Immigration Council policy director.

“This is the most egregious final step in what has been many years of devolving due process in the immigration system,” she said.

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