According to experts, Latin American gang members aren’t getting gang-affiliated tattoos so they can more easily enter the United States unnoticed.
Kyle Williamson, director of the West Texas Anti-Gang Center, told the Daily Caller that members of MS-13 and El Tren de Aragua are most likely to hide their affiliations in an effort to enter the U.S.
“The trend is for young gang members to not get tattoos. The older gang members with tattoos are more easily identified. However, if they are identified as a gang member it does not really mean anything from an immigration perspective. The main tactic is not to have tattoos and be identified as associated with known gang members,” Williamson said.
A Border Patrol official who requested anonymity echoed Williamson’s explanation, and local Texas Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland said gang members have “gotten smarter.”
“When we have identified gang members, it’s either through information we’ve shared from their country, or if they’ve been arrested here before and identified as a gang member, but oftentimes I bet you there’s even more that we haven’t recognized or identified as being a gang member because, just like those coming in that they’re not running histories on, they’re just allowing them to come in,” he continued.
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One of the gangs – El Tren de Aragua – is based in Venezuela and is known for drug smuggling and human trafficking, in addition to other criminal behavior.
“They can do terrible things like dismember someone and leave them in a bag. But they usually avoid armed confrontations with other gangs. They are more about leaving messages,” Venezuelan journalist Ronna Rísquez said earlier this year.
A federal judge recently disclosed that 40% of illegal immigrants apprehended and later released under the Biden administration’s “parole” program did not appear in court.
According to The Washington Times, while more than 40% of these migrants never checked in at all, only 464 out of 1,507 who did check in were issued a notice to appear, resulting in 82% of the parolees not being entered into the immigration court docket.
