from the quantity-over-quality dept
Having turned little-known Venezuelan gang Tren de Agagua (TdA) into the new MS-13 with a few viral videos and extremely questionable assertions, the Trump Administration is now injecting the same artifice into its TdA membership determinations.
ICE is not only along for the ride, but it’s helping drive. Despite guidance warning against using tattoos to determine TdA membership, most TdA determinations tend to rely solely on vague assertions about gang tattoos. Unlike MS-13, TdA members aren’t expected to get tatted up in easily identifiable, permanent markings. This is something the DHS knows, even though it’s pretending not to these days because it makes it that much easier to toss innocent migrants into El Salvadoran prisons.
Here’s the stuff ICE is deliberately ignoring:
[I]nternal U.S. Department of Homeland Security and FBI documents obtained by USA TODAY reveal federal authorities for years have questioned the effectiveness of using tattoos to identify members of Tren de Aragua, also known as TdA.
“Gang Unit collections determined that the Chicago Bulls attire, clocks, and rose tattoos are typically related to the Venezuelan culture and not a definite (indicator) of being a member or associate of the (TdA),” reads a 2023 “Situational Awareness” bulletin on the criminal gang written by the U.S. Custom and Border Protection’s El Paso Sector Intelligence Unit.
In another DHS document, titled “ICE Intel Leads,” a former Venezuelan police official interviewed by authorities said tattoos are “the easiest but least effective way” of identifying members of the criminal gang.
That alone would indicate the current reliance on tattoos is problematic. But that’s only the icing on top of innocent people now residing in an El Salvadoran hellhole simply because someone working for a DHS component declared a tattoo they saw to be TdA-related.
Making matters much, much worse is the latest news. Andry Jose Hernandez Romero — the gay Venezuelan makeup artist the DHS shipped off to an El Salvador prison — was declared a gang member by the extremely dubious assertions of a Milwaukee, Wisconsin ex-cop who was such a terrible cop, he’s now reduced to working for private prison company, CoreCivic, which hired him only four months after he resigned rather than be fired by the PD.
A disgraced former Milwaukee cop with credibility issues helped seal the fate of a gay Venezuelan makeup artist sent to El Salvador’s notorious prison, according to documents reviewed by USA TODAY.
A report approved by the police-officer-turned-prison-contractor claimed the Venezuelan man was a member of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang.
But the credibility of Charles Cross, Jr., who signed the report, was so bad, prosecutors flagged him on a list of police who had been accused of lying, breaking the law or acting in a way that erodes their credibility to testify in Milwaukee County.
Former officer Cross was fired from the Milwaukee PD in 2012 for crashing his car into his own home while intoxicated. At the time, Cross was also being investigated for overtime fraud and had already racked up enough misconduct charges that Milwaukee County prosecutors placed him on the “Brady List” — a list of all law enforcement officers the prosecutor’s office felt presented serious credibility issues.
That string of events ended Cross’s law enforcement career, but he’s managed to find a way to keep fucking people’s lives up while working within the confines of the private sector.
Today, Cross, 62, is one of the private prison contractors helping to identify Venezuelan migrants as members of the criminal outfit Tren de Aragua – a designation that’s landing them in a Salvadoran prison without due process.
Entrusting private contractors – and not federal agents – to determine whether migrants are members of a criminal gang adds a new level of apprehension, migrant advocates and a former ICE official said.
The documents obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel show Cross made this determination. Whether or not he acted alone is still unknown. The DHS refuses to answer questions about this case, as does CoreCivic. The only other name on the report that turned Andry Romero into a gang member is Arturo Torres, another employee of CoreCivic.
The only statement offered by CoreCivic doesn’t make anyone involved in this deportation look any better. If anything, it makes everyone involved look like functioning cogs in a deliberately broken immigrant justice system.
Ryan Gustin, a CoreCivic spokesman, wouldn’t comment specifically on Cross’s case but said in a statement that all employees “clear a rigorous, federal background clearance process” and must be approved by ICE before being employed at an ICE-contracted facility.
Either the background check isn’t actually “rigorous” or multiple instances of police misconduct aren’t considered disqualifying. That goes for both CoreCivic and the agency that provides the final approval of new hires.
CoreCivic also claims it has no say in deportation decisions. But it also says it performs a “thorough assessment” of everyone placed in its detention centers — assessments that obviously include speculation about gang membership based solely on tattoos observed by ex-cops or whatever warm bodies CoreCivic is filling its ranks with these days as the market for detention facilities increases exponentially.
First and foremost, bad cops shouldn’t be hired by private contractors doing law enforcement work. But more importantly, the government shouldn’t be pawning off gang member determination to private contractors whose staff doesn’t have the specific training and expertise to make these judgment calls. Unfortunately, when the party in power doesn’t care about collateral damage because it only affects people they already don’t care for, this is what we get. And what we have now is only going to get a whole lot worse.
Filed Under: charles cross jr, el salvador, gang database, ice, immigration, milwaukee pd, tda
Companies: corecivic
