Picture of 44-year-old English man’s tattoo somehow ends up being used by U.S. government to identify gang members

A British man was dumbfounded last week when he noticed a picture of his own forearm on official documents being used by the Department of Homeland Security to identify and deport supposed gang members.

Donald Trump’s overly-aggressive policy regarding the deportation of immigrants has received plenty of criticism. The main issue is that the government seems to not be too concerned with catching actual criminals, just people who look like them. Take Kilmar Abrego Garcia for example. The man was swept up with a bunch of other deportees after an administrative error, but the Trump administration isn’t doing a thing to rectify it. 

A tattoo is all it takes

Clearly federal agencies aren’t taking a precise approach when it comes to apprehending people. Nothing exposes this fact more than the methods these guys are using to identify and detain supposed “criminals.” The DHS considers tattoos as identifiers for gang members. In a document used by the agency several tattoo designs are shown which supposedly link to the infamous Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang.

The problem is, a lot of the tattoo designs seem pretty basic, from stars to crowns to clocks, anyone could have them. If the DHS didn’t say otherwise, these could easily be pictures of ordinary people with ordinary tattoos. Well it turns out that’s exactly what at least one of them is.

The picture of the clock tattoo on a man’s forearm doesn’t belong to some Venezuelan drug kingpin, but rather a man named Pete from Derbyshire, England. Pete Belton, 44, was no doubt surprised to see a picture of his own arm featured in official U.S. government documentation for identifying criminals.

He told the BBC it was a “bit strange, bit funny at first,” but now he’s worried about an upcoming trip to Miami this year, “in my head I’m thinking if I’m working in border force and I saw me walking through I’d think ‘hey up we’ve got one, he’s the one in the document’.” Knowing how the government is operating under Trump I wouldn’t put it past them to be stupid enough to actually believe Pete is a Venezuelan gang member.

Does the Trump administration even know what it’s doing?

According to the BBC several of the pictures used by the DHS come from tattoo artist’s websites with no clear link to the TDA gang. So basically this documentation is pretty useless. Last month also saw an innocent gay barber sent to El Salvador after being identified as a gang member thanks to a crown tattoo.

Trump’s policy is like a wrecking ball, incredibly destructive, but not very accurate. Sure, he can tout the impressive number of “criminals” he’s deported, but apparently all it takes to be considered a gang member is a non-American accent and some tattoos.