The left image is the bicep of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with the “Deus Vult” tattoo that got him removed from the National Guard assignment to President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 due to its association with Neo-Nazi extremist groups. Whether Hegseth’s reason for having inked it was that he identifies as a member of such groups or is a mental teenager who thought it sounded badass without fully realizing its prevalence among hate groups is unknown but probably somewhere in between, solely to give him the benefit of the doubt he wouldn’t get if it said “1488.”
Still, Hegseth screamed he was being unfairly targeted for his tattoo and, obviously, the vast majority of Republican Senators didn’t see it as an issue (nor the credible rape accusations or alcoholism he outright admitted) and confirmed him to lead the most powerful military in human history where he now regularly uses unsecured chat apps to discuss ongoing operations.
On the above right is a tattoo on what appears to be the thigh (?) of Neri Alvarado Borges, a Venezuelan native who had it inked to support his 15 year-old brother Nelyerson, who is autistic. Borges taught swimming classes for developmentally disabled kids in his home country until 2023 when he migrated to the US and took a job at a Venezuelan bakery outside Dallas. It’s not clear whether Alvarado, 25, who was detained outside his apartment last month, had jumped the border or was in the US on asylum or temporary protected status. Either was his sister and his boss both tell Mother Jones that an ICE agent had told Alvarado “You’re clean. I’m going to put down here that you have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua,” after reviewing his phone and tattoos.
Then that agent was overruled and Alvarado’s boss, who had no idea what happened to him, only found out weeks later where his employee was, when CBS News obtained a list of the men sent to that dungeon in El Salvador, the one Kristi Noem just used as a set for a propaganda commercial.
I toured the CECOT, El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center.
President Trump and I have a clear message to criminal illegal aliens: LEAVE NOW.
If you do not leave, we will hunt you down, arrest you, and you could end up in this El Salvadorian prison. pic.twitter.com/OItDqNsFxM
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) March 26, 2025
It’s not clear how many of the 328 guys shipped there were actual members of Tren de Aragua, members of any criminal gang, or were simply Venezuelan men who happened to have ANY tattoos.
Now for the Trump fanboys in the audience here’s something the regulars here would like you to weigh in on. Let’s even go ahead and assume for your purposes that – as opposed to being an asylum claimant awaiting a hearing and thus inside the country legally, if contingently – Alvarado had simply jumped the border and was in the United States illegally thus subject to deportation.
Why’s he in a dungeon in El Salvador for what could be the rest of his life rather than back in Venezuela? And before you say “He’s a criminal, he committed a crime by entering the US without authorization,” understand that other Venezuelan migrants have been sent back home. Just a few hundred are in the CECOT prison in considerably worse conditions than the “DC Gulag.”
Any of you Trump voters want to step up and make this one work? Don’t be shy. Bonus points if you can be morally and logically consistent with how your party has treated Hegseth and Alvarado.