How did U.S. agencies identify individuals as Tren de Aragua members for the March 2025 deportations?

1. The legal and bureaucratic trigger: Proclamation and forms

The deportations flowed from President Trump’s Proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act against Tren de Aragua and from Department-level guidance that directed officials to use specific forms — including an “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” and Form AEA-21A — to determine who qualified as a member subject to immediate removal ^[1]. The proclamation and follow-on memos instructed agents to apply age, nationality and alleged gang membership criteria when making detention and removal decisions, formalizing an expedited pathway for Venezuelan noncitizens labeled as TdA ^[1].

2. A points-based “rubric”: Tattoos, dress, photos and other indicators

Court filings and reporting reveal a points-based rubric used by some agencies to “validate” membership: agents assigned points for suspicious tattoos, certain styles of dress, photographed hand signs, and other alleged signals of affiliation, and individuals who reached a threshold were marked for removal ^[2]. Lawyers for deportees argued in court that the rubric treated superficial markers — for example, common tattoos or gestures — as heavily probative even when context was absent, and court documents show government forms explicitly guided these assessments ^{[4] [2]}.

3. Interagency coordination and watchlisting efforts

Following public claims of a national TdA threat, the FBI and other agencies convened an interagency working group and sought watchlisting and intelligence adjustments, prompting the Terrorism Screening Center and multiple components across DHS, DOJ, State and Treasury to coordinate information-sharing and labeling ^[3]. Wired’s reporting of internal records shows many agencies were still grappling with whether Tren de Aragua functioned as a unified transnational terrorist organization in the U.S., even as leadership-level messaging pressed a more urgent national-security frame ^[3].

4. Field evidence, criminal cases and uneven provenance

Some removals were tied to parallel criminal indictments and DOJ statements alleging gang-linked criminal enterprises such as ATM malware or fraud, which prosecutors identified as involving alleged TdA members in specific cases ^[5]. Yet investigative reporting and court challenges found that many deportees had little or no corroborating criminal records linking them to a central TdA command, and CBP statistics cited by FactCheck showed only a small number of TdA-identified apprehensions relative to the overall Venezuelan migrant population, undercutting claims of mass, well-documented membership ^{[5] [6]}.

5. Legal pushback, international friction and political context

The government’s reliance on administrative forms and the rubric drew immediate legal challenges and a temporary court injunction preventing removals for some detainees, with judges questioning whether the statutory and factual predicates for Alien Enemies expulsions were met ^{[1] [7]}. Reporting by the New York Times and PBS documented that investigators and lawyers could not find clear evidence linking many deported men to Tren de Aragua, and observers pointed to political motives in elevating TdA as a national-security crisis — a contention given weight by internal agency uncertainty documented by Wired ^{[2] [3]}.

6. What reporting does not yet prove and why it matters

Available sources document the forms, the rubric and interagency coordination but do not produce a line-by-line accounting tying each deported individual to verified TdA leadership or operations; where such individual-level evidence exists, it has been presented unevenly across prosecutions and sanctions lists ^{[1] [8] [2]}. That evidentiary gap — combined with agency use of presumptive indicators like tattoos and clothing — is central to ongoing court fights and to questions about the scope and legality of mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act ^{[2] [7]}.