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Under President Donald Trump, the federal government has accused Venezuelan men of being part of the criminal gang Tren de Aragua because of their tattoos. The president invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members without seeing a judge. The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged the move.
Now, a Venezuelan advocate in Utah says the stereotype of Venezuelans as gang members goes beyond law enforcement and affects their treatment by other Latinos.
There are roughly 10,700 foreign-born Venezuelans in Utah, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s up from 1,800 in 2013, making Venezuelans the fastest-growing Hispanic group in the state. Utah has the second-highest percentage of Venezuelans after Florida.
“The rhetoric out there is, if you're Venezuelan, you're part of the Tren de Aragua, and that has been very damaging to our community,” said immigration attorney Carlos Trujillo.
Venezuelans are facing increased scrutiny from law enforcement, Trujillo said. He has two clients without criminal records who have been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was a turning point. If authorities want to identify a potential gang member, he said the first step is racial profiling. According to court filings shared by NPR, the government’s checklist for identifying gang members requires them to be Venezuelan, so Trujillo said law enforcement must first identify someone as a minority. He said many items on the list can be misunderstood.
“From a simple family tattoo to the fact that you may be in communication with someone that you may not even know is part of the Tren de Aragua,” he said. “But it always starts with one thing: Are you Venezuelan?”
The gang does have a presence in the country, Trujillo noted.
“But the problem that is being created by government officials is just a mislabeling,” he said. “The fact that you are willing to just use a wide brush that can take any Venezuelan, pretty much, to be a part of Tren de Aragua.”
Stereotyping Venezuelans as gang members extends into other Latino communities, said Patricia Quiñonez, a Venezuelan journalist who runs the Instagram account Utahzolanos.
“We’ve noticed other nationalities, including those who are Hispanic like us, blame us” for immigration crackdowns on people from various countries, she said in Spanish.
“Hemos notado que otras nacionalidades, incluso también hispanas como nosotros, nos echan la culpa.”
Quiñonez said she’s heard from other Venezuelans that attitudes have changed, with colleagues becoming less friendly toward them. This has driven some to remove Venezuelan flags from their cars.
Quiñonez agrees with the president’s push for a safer country and that criminals should pay the consequences for their actions. Still, she said everyone should have the right to defend themselves in front of a judge, and Venezuelans shouldn’t all be lumped together.
She compared the generalization to a doctor’s role in helping someone through illness.
“When there’s an illness, the doctor does a diagnostic and says, ‘I need to remove [something] so everything else is well.’ But the doctor removes what they identify, the part that’s damaged, for the best possible health.”
“Cuando hay una enfermedad, el médico hace un diagnóstico, dice, ‘necesito extirpar para que todo lo demás esté bien,’ pero extirpa lo que identifica, la parte que está dañada, para que continúe la salud lo más posible.”
It’s Quiñonez’s hope that Venezuelans don’t continue to be scapegoated.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
