An LGBTQ+ asylum-seeker has reportedly been deported from the US because of his tattoos.

Lindsay Toczylowski, the founder and president of Immigrant Defenders Law Centre (ImmDef), claimed that one of her clients, a Venezuelan tattoo artist, had been deported to El Salvador because of misconceptions regarding their body art, reports The Pride LA.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials reportedly used the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a measure instigated to deport people threatening the country’s safety. It was last invoked to intern people of Japanese descent during World War II.

Immigration officers reportedly said the tattoos were related to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organisation. Toczylowski says they were mistaken.

“Our client’s tattoos are not gang-related,” she said. “They are benign and reflect his work in the arts. ICE submitted photos of his tattoos as ‘evidence,’ despite there being no other proof of any criminal affiliation.”

The client reportedly fled Venezuela last year to escape persecution and made it to the US “seeking protection,” but was held in ICE prisons for months before being deported.

Toczylowski was “horrified” by the development, and worried about what “might happen to him now”.

ImmDef grew concerned after ICE did not bring the man to a court hearing. The government lawyer had no idea why he wasn’t there, it is claimed.

After contacting the Texas facility where her client had been held, Toczylowski was told that he was “no longer there” and had “disappeared from [the] online detainee locator”.

What is the Alien Enemies Act?

The act grants the president full authority to detain or remove individuals from the U.S. based solely on their nationality or suspected ties to enemy organisations. The law does not require concrete evidence before deportation, raising concerns among legal experts and human rights organisations.

The Trump administration was ordered to stop using the 227-year-old law when district judge James Boasberg issued an emergency order.

Trump has claimed that Tren de Aragua was “perpetrating, attempting and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.”

However, the judge ruled that the law did not offer a good basis for deportations, saying the terms “invasion” and “predatory incursion” relate to “hostile acts perpetrated by enemy nations”.

The matter is set to reach the Supreme Court, according to the BBC.

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