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      US allies worldwide decry Trump’s car tariffs and threaten retaliation

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      Governments from Tokyo to Berlin and Ottawa to Paris have voiced sharp criticism of Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with several of the US’s staunchest long-term allies threatening retaliatory action.Trump announced on Wednesday that he would impose a 25% tariff on cars and car parts shipped to the US from 3 April in a move experts have predicted is likely to depress production, drive up prices and fuel a global trade war.The US imported almost $475bn (£367bn) worth of cars last year, mostly from Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Canada and Germany. European carmakers alone sold more than 750,000 vehicles to American drivers.France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Thursday he had told his US counterpart that tariffs were not a good idea. They “disrupt value chains, create an inflationary effect and destroy jobs. So it’s not good for the US or European economies,” he said.Paris would work with the European Commission on a response intended to get Trump to reconsider, he said. Officials in Berlin also stressed that the commission would defend free trade as the foundation of the EU’s prosperity.Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, bluntly described Trump’s decision as wrong, and said Washington appeared to have “chosen a path at whose end lie only losers, since tariffs and isolation hurt prosperity, for everyone”.France’s finance minister, Eric Lombard, called the US president’s plan “very bad news” and said the EU would be forced to raise its own tariffs. His German counterpart, Robert Habeck, promised a “firm EU response”. “We will not take this lying down,” he said.Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said Europe would approach the US with common sense but “not on our knees”. Good transatlantic relations are “a strategic matter” and must survive more than one prime minister and one president, he said.The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, described the move as “bad for businesses, worse for consumers” because “tariffs are taxes”. She said the bloc would continue to seek negotiated solutions while protecting its economic interests.The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the tariffs were “very concerning” and that his government would be “pragmatic and clear-eyed” in response. The UK “does not want a trade war, but it’s important we keep all options on the table”, he said.His Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney, said on social media: “We will get through this crisis, and we will build a stronger, more resilient economy.”Carney later told a press conference that his administration would wait until next week to respond to the new US threat of tariffs, and that nothing was off the table regarding possible countermeasures.He would, he added, speak to provincial premiers and business leaders on Friday to discuss a coordinated response.“It doesn’t make sense when there’s a series of US initiatives that are going to come in relatively rapid succession to respond to each of them. We’re going to know a lot more in a week, and we will respond then,” he said.One option for Canada is to impose excise duties on exports of oil, potash and other commodities. “Nothing is off the table to defend our workers and our country,” said Carney, who added that the old economic and security relationship between Canada and the US was over.South Korea said it would put in place a full emergency response to Trump’s proposed measures by April.China’s foreign ministry said the US approach violated World Trade Organization rules and was “not conducive to solving its own problems”. Its spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, said: “No country’s development and prosperity are achieved by imposing tariffs.”The Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, said Tokyo was putting “all options on the table”. Japan “makes the largest amount of investment to the US, so we wonder if it makes sense for [Washington] to apply uniform tariffs to all countries”, he said.Reuters and Agence-France Presse contributed to this report More

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      Human rights groups rebuke Kristi Noem’s visit to El Salvador prison: ‘political theater’

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      Human rights organizations on Thursday denounced the visit by the US homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to the notorious prison in El Salvador that is holding hundreds of Venezuelans deported from the US earlier this month without a hearing, calling her actions “political theater”.Critics condemned Noem’s visit as just the latest example of the Trump administration’s aim to spread fear among immigrant communities, as the cabinet member stood in a baseball hat in front of a line of caged men bare from the waist up.Noem visited the so-called Cecot, or Terrorism Confinement Center, an infamous maximum-security prison. The prison, built in 2022 during a brutal government crackdown on organized crime, is where nearly 300 migrants, previously in US custody, were recently expelled and are currently detained.They have been accused of being violent gang members, despite family members of several of the men asserting that they are not.“The Department of Homeland Security secretary’s visit is an example of the fear that Trump’s government wants to instill in immigrants,” attorney Ivania Cruz said on Thursday. Cruz works with the Committee to Defend Human and Community Rights (Unidehc), a human rights organization in El Salvador. “This is precisely what Noem has done — use the Cecot as a cinematographic space,” she added.Noem’s visit to the prison “was a typical gross and cruel display of political theater that we have come to expect from the Trump administration,” Vicki Gass said. Gass is the executive director of the Latin America Working Group (LAWG), a human rights organization based in Washington DC. “That the Trump administration is flouting judicial orders and denying due process to people within the US borders is outrageous and frightening.”Earlier this month, Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime provision that allows the executive to detain and deport people coming from an “enemy” nation. Despite a federal judge blocking the invocation of the act, shortly after, planes from the US landed in El Salvador, filled with men and women in immigration custody. More than 250 men, mostly from Venezuela, were quickly and forcibly shuffled into the Cecot, where officials shaved their heads and placed them in cells.Trump and his administration have repeatedly claimed that the men were members of transnational gangs. When invoking the Alien Enemies Act, Trump – without proof – accused the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua of having “infiltrated” the US at the behest of the Venezuelan government. US intelligence agencies contradict Trump’s claims about ties between the gang and the Venezuelan government, the New York Times has reported, and the Venezuelan government has also denied it is connected.News reports across various publications have emerged revealing the identity of the Venezuelan men expelled to El Salvador, with family members saying some of the men are innocent. When pressed, the DHS has not provided proof of those men’s purported ties to the gang and they were flown out of the US without a hearing, raising questions about violations of constitutional due process rights.The federal judge in Washington who blocked the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act has repeatedly pressed the Trump administration to provide information about their process to conduct the operation, also ordering “individualized hearings” for people Trump wants to expel under the act. In response, the Trump administration invoked “state secrets” privilege, to avoid disclosing any information about the operation.The Salvadorian prison that Noem visited was constructed in 2022, during El Salvador’s “state of exception”, a move by the president, Nayib Bukele, that rounded up thousands of people in an attempt to crack down on criminal gangs. According to Cruz, the human rights attorney, and other organizations, the state of exception violated due process rights, with thousands being caught up in arrests and detention without proof of gang membership.Cruz has been targeted for her work denouncing conditions in the Salvadorian prisons. During the state of exception, her brother was arrested and imprisoned by the Bukele government. Cruz fought for his release and since then, she has taken on a role as a key spokesperson for people who have been wrongfully detained in the prisons.“It is not by chance that the expelled immigrants are from Venezuela, when we know there is a political conflict between the two countries,” Cruz said. “Today it is Venezuelans – tomorrow may be Chileans, then Colombians. It’s an international problem that is provoking conflict.”Noem’s visit came one day before a protest organized by a Salvadorian rights organization, opposing the Central American government’s “arbitrary detentions”.“I also want everybody to know, if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you can face,” Noem said in a video posted on X from the Cecot prison. “Know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”The use of another country’s vast, maximum-security prison to detain immigrants from a third country is unprecedented, especially considering the grave allegations of abuses at this and other Salvadorian prisons.“Amnesty International has extensively documented the inhumane conditions within detentions centers in El Salvador, including the Cecot, where those removed are now being held,” the organization said in a statement on Wednesday. “Reports indicate extreme overcrowding, lack of access to adequate medical care, and widespread ill-treatment amounting to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”According to Ana María Méndez Dardón, the Central America director for the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights non-profit in DC, there are two or three huge prisons in El Salvador where the mass incarceration of people has been concentrated. The detention centers in the country have faced extreme allegations of human rights abuses.“The Cecot has a capacity for 40,000 people, that is to say only 30% of the current prison population, the rest of the population is located in other centers, such as the one in Mariona, where torture and other human rights violations have been documented,” Méndez Dardón said.She added: “Unlike the videos edited and produced about Cecot, President Bukele is not showing the world the true reality within the other detention centers, where the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has stated that they have committed torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment.”Reports have described bare metal bunks stacked high like shelving and with no bedding whatsoever.The Trump administration’s practice of denying due process and defying judicial orders “is outrageous and frightening”, Gass, from LAWG, added. “So is forcibly disappearing them to Cecot where prisoners are not allowed to meet with lawyers or their family members, are jammed into overcrowded cells, and never see the light of day.” More

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      ‘They tricked us’: migrants who braved the Darién Gap forced home by Trump deal

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      Outside the Lajas Blancas migrant camp in southern Panama, wooden shops are boarded up. A bed of cold ash lies in an iron drum barbecue which once served meat skewers to hungry migrants.Six months ago, hundreds of people would pass through the camp every day, emerging from the jungles of the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama to receive humanitarian aid, before continuing their journey north towards the US.Now, however, migration through the gap has slowed to a trickle and the footfall is in the opposite direction, as many migrants from South America try to return home.Adriangela Contreras was one of 300,000 migrants to make the perilous crossing in 2024, carrying her two-year-old daughter, Arianna, as she stepped over dead bodies on the trail.She arrived at Lajas Blancas in November amid a crackdown by Panamanian authorities who rolled out barbed wire in the jungle and introduced biometric tests at the border.Under a $6m agreement with the US, hundreds of migrants from Colombia and Ecuador were returned to their home countries on deportation flights.Most Venezuelans were allowed to proceed, however, and Contreras’ group made it as far as southern Mexico, sleeping in the street and selling candies or washing windscreens to earn bus fares. But when on his first day in office Donald Trump shut down the CBP One app used by asylum seekers to request appointments, Contreras felt she had little option but to retrace her steps.“I’m so disappointed, I didn’t [decide to migrate] for myself but for my family,” she said. “Now I just want to go home, it’s been a long and difficult journey.”The shutdown of CBP One and the increased Panamanian controls have all but extinguished the Darién migrant route.In February, crossings were down 96% compared with the previous year. At the end of that month Lajas Blancas – which once regularly sheltered over 3,000 migrants in plywood buildings and tents – held just 485 migrants, 90% of whom had come from the north.So far this year, 4,091 migrants have returned to Panama and the government has struggled to deal with the logistics of this reverse flow.Oscar Ramírez, a 52-year-old Venezuelan, arrived at Lajas Blancas with barely $1 in his pocket. He had sold his truck to follow the “American dream”, but said he was robbed in Mexico City and then held prisoner by people smugglers in a hotel near Monterrey. “The only thing sure about Mexico is that you will be mugged,” he said.When he eventually made it into the US he was arrested by Ice that same morning and detained for three months before being deported to Villahermosa, Mexico, in January.“They tricked us,” he said, “they told us we would be able to get a repatriation flight from Panama.”Many of the migrants, including Contreras, say they were promised that, upon reaching Panama, they would be offered a place on a plane to Cúcuta, a Colombian city on the border with Venezuela.When the flight never materialized, some migrants who could afford it began taking small boats back to Colombia. On 22 February, a boat containing 19 migrants capsized and a nine-year-old Venezuelan girl drowned.Since then, the Panamanian government has introduced a new route, bussing migrants from Lajas Blancas to Miramar, a port on the Caribbean coast, and boarding them on to ferries to La Miel, an isolated village close to the Colombian border.“It was a horrible experience,” said Jessica Álvarez, who had never been on a boat before. “There were times when I thought we were going to turn over, it was really scary. I vomited and my son was really sick, everyone was so seasick.”From La Miel the migrants are sent on small boats to the villages of Capurganá and then Necoclí in Colombian territory. From there many, including Álvarez, have opted to stay with friends or family in Colombian cities.But Contreras and her daughter remain stuck in Necoclí.“When we first arrived they gave us nothing, not a bite to eat, not a mattress, nothing,” she said, speaking by phone from the Colombian port. With the help of some friends she managed to find a space on the floor of a guesthouse, but she is unsure how she will raise the money to return to Venezuela to see her son who recently underwent eye surgery.“I just want to be back with my family. I hope Venezuela has something better in store for me,” she said.The presidents of Panama and Colombia will meet in Panama City on 28 March with migration at the top of the agenda. Humanitarian aid agencies have started to depart Lajas Blancas, which is due to be closed in the coming weeks. Any further migrants arriving through the Darién Gap will be immediately deported to their home country or to Colombia, according to Panama’s ministry of public security.Ramírez had the funds to pay for a bus to Cúcuta and by Wednesday was back with his family in the state of Barinas. Over the phone he said he was happy to be home, even if he no longer had his truck.“Us migrants, we all had the same thing in our heads, the American dream,” he said. “But after the things we lived, I realized it’s just that: a dream.” More

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      US war plans leak shows Five Eyes allies must ‘look out for ourselves’, says Mark Carney

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      Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has said the inadvertent leak of classified military plans by senior US officials means that allied nations must increasingly “look out for ourselves” as trust frays with a once-close ally.Speaking a day after it was revealed that a journalist was accidentally included in a group chat discussing airstrikes against Yemeni rebels, Carney said the intelligence blunder was a “serious, serious issue and all lessons must be taken”. He said it would be critical to see “how people react to those mistakes and how they tighten them up”.Canada is one of the members of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, alongside Australia, New Zealand and the UK and the leak of classified information is likely to put further strain on the group as it weighs how seriously the current American administration takes the handling of top secret information.The revelations came as Canada grapples with a rapidly deteriorating relationship with the United States, its largest trading partner and closest military ally.“My responsibility is to plan for the worst, is to think about the most difficult evolution of the new threat environment, what it means for Canada and how do we best protect Canada,” Carney said during a campaign stop on Tuesday. The prime minister called a snap election on Sunday.“Part of that response is to be more and more Canadian in our defence capabilities, more and more Canadian in our decisions … We have to look out for ourselves.”Asked about the incident on Tuesday, the UK’s armed forces minister, Luke Pollard, told the Commons Defence Committee that no British service personnel had been put at risk as a result.He added: “All UK service personnel are covered by our normal approach to operational security, and the committee will understand that I won’t go into the details of how we keep our involvement in any support for military operations in the Red Sea or anywhere else [secure].“But we’ve got high confidence that the measures that we have got with our allies, including the United States, remain intact.”A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke at length at a briefing about the contribution the UK makes to joint military operations with the Americans. However, the spokesperson refused to directly criticise the two figures who were most critical of Europe’s record on defence, JD Vance, the vice-president, and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary. The spokesperson also insisted that the UK remains happy to share intelligence with the US despite the leak.The government of New Zealand declined to comment on the matter. When asked by the Guardian if the security breach had raised concerns about the sharing of sensitive intel with Trump’s administration, the offices for New Zealand’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon, and the minister for defence, Judith Collins, said the situation was “a matter for the US administration”.Behind closed doors, senior government officials would likely be discussing the risks of sharing intelligence with the US, amid what could be viewed as a lowering of protocol standards, but the breach would not be a dealbreaker, said Andrew Little, whose ministerial roles covered security, intelligence and defence under New Zealand’s last Labour government.“Our relationship transcends individual administrations and individual political leaders. There will be things that – like everybody – members of this government, will be looking askance at. But I think it’s about managing the relationship in the long run,” Little said.So far, New Zealand has been managing its US relationship responsibly, Little said, but it was now “a relationship that requires constant vigilance”.Robert Patman, a professor at the University of Otago in Dunedin who specialises in international relations, called the security breach “extraordinary” and “cavalier”. “It does confirm what many of us felt, that Mr Trump has picked people according to loyalty, rather than competence, and this was almost a perfect storm waiting to happen,” Patman said.But the wider issue for New Zealand and other Five Eyes countries was knowing how to respond to the Trump administration’s “radical departure” from the rules-based order, which included making territorial claims against liberal democracies and siding with Russian president Vladimir Putin over negotiations in Ukraine.“We should be friendly towards the Trump administration where our interests converge, but this administration is doing things which are fundamentally a challenge to [New Zealand’s] national interests.”In Australia, the department of foreign affairs and trade said: “This incident is a matter for the United States. Australia and the United States engage regularly on implementation of mutually recognised standards for the protection of classified material.”Ben Doherty contributed additional reporting More

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      Venezuelan immigrants deported from US to Venezuela via Honduras

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      A group of Venezuelan immigrants have been deported from the US to Honduras and then sent on to Venezuela, after an apparent deal between the three countries.The flights came one day after a Venezuelan government official announced on social media it would resume accepting deportees from the US. Deportations from the US to Venezuela, which have rarely taken place, have been a point of dispute for the Trump administration.Sunday’s indirect deportation flight to Venezuela comes amid heightened tensions between the Trump administration and Venezuela, and an increase in operations targeting Venezuelan immigrants in the US.The Venezuelan government official’s announcement also alluded to the highly contentious expulsion of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador last week.“Migrating is not a crime, and we will not rest until we accomplish the return of all who need it, and until we rescue our brothers that are kidnapped in El Salvador,” said Jorge Rodríguez Gomez, the president of the Venezuelan national assembly.The Honduran foreign minister announced on Sunday night that 199 Venezuelans were deported from the US to a military base in Honduras on Sunday. From there, the migrants were placed on Venezuelan planes and returned to Venezuela.“This process shows us again the positive cooperation between the government of Honduras, the United States of America and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” Enrique Reina said on X.According to the US state department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, the Trump administration expects to see “a consistent flow of deportation flights to Venezuela going forward”.Since the Trump administration took office two months ago, there has been heightened pressure and aggression towards the Venezuelan government. In early February, the Venezuelan government sent two planes to the US to pick up deportees and returned them to Venezuela. At the time, the two flights were seen as a breakthrough in relations between the US and Venezuela.However, scheduled flights were again placed on hold by the Venezuelan government, after Donald Trump reversed the 2022 license given to Chevron to operate in Venezuela. Last week, secretary of state Marco Rubio threatened “new, severe, and escalating sanctions” on Venezuela if it did not accept deportations.On Monday, the treasury department published a license authorizing the wind down of Chevron’s work in Venezuela.The first deportation to Venezuela via Honduras took place last month, when the US deported 177 Venezuelan immigrants previously detained at the Guantánamo Bay naval base. The US government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and the Honduran foreign minister at the time both announced that deportation.The Honduran government has strong diplomatic relations with Venezuela and their involvement in the transfer of Venezuelan deportees raises questions about behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Trump administration and the two Latin American governments. Before the US president took office, Honduran leftwing president Xiomara Castro had threatened to expel the US military from a base in the Central American country, in response to Trump’s threats to engage in mass deportations.But after February’s first deportation to Venezuela via Honduras, Reina confirmed that Castro’s husband – former president reformist Manuel Zelaya– had coordinated with Trump envoys Mauricio Claver-Carone and Richard Grenell for the transfer of the migrants.In a shakeup to US and Honduran relations, Castro’s brother-in-law and Zelaya’s brother, was previously accused in a US federal court of collaborating with drug traffickers. Her predecessor Juan Orland0 Hernández was convicted and sentenced in New York of drug trafficking.All of this comes amid heightened US aggression towards the Venezuelan government. Earlier this year, before Trump assumed the presidency, the US state department announced a reward of up to $25m, for information leading to the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. In March 2020, under Trump’s first presidency, Maduro and other top officials were indicted in a New York federal court of drug trafficking and related crimes.On Monday, Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on any country that purchases oil from Venezuela, saying the country “has been very hostile to the United States and the Freedoms which we espouse”.When announcing the secondary tariffs, Trump added, without proof, that Venezuela has “purposefully and deceitfully” sent to the US, tens of thousands of “undercover” gang members. In late February, the state department designated the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization. The Trump administration has continually, also without proof, claimed that many Venezuelan immigrants in the US belong to the gang, and have been sent by the Venezuelan government.Last week, the Trump administration quickly, and without due process, expelled 238 Venezuelan migrants from the US to El Salvador after invoking the Alien Enemies Act. When invoking the Act, Trump said that the Tren de Aragua gang “is closely aligned with, and indeed has infiltrated, the Maduro regime”.The Venezuelan immigrants were sent to a high-security “terrorism” prison, run by the rightwing Salvadoran government of Nayib Bukele.In the days that followed, news organizations began publishing details of the operation, including that some of the Venezuelans expelled to El Salvador were not members of the Tren de Aragua gang. The Trump administration continues to say that the rendition operation was legal, and that all Venezuelans expelled in the operation were gang members. A federal judge blocked the administration from expelling people via the Alien Enemies Act, and on Monday, he ruled migrants are entitled to individual hearings before being expelled.Despite the Trump administration claiming that alleged Tren de Aragua members were sent by the Venezuelan government, an intelligence document suggests otherwise. Reporting from the New York Times last Thursday revealed that the CIA and the National Security Agency contradict Trump’s claims of the Venezuelan government’s ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, raising questions about Trump’s invocation of the war-time Alien Enemies Act. The justice department announced a criminal investigation into the source of the New York Times’ reporting. More

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      Trump revokes legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans

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      Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday, in the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration.It will be effective 24 April.The move cuts short a two-year “parole” granted to the immigrants under former president Joe Biden that allowed them to enter the country by air if they had US sponsors.Trump, a Republican, took steps to ramp up immigration enforcement after taking office, including a push to deport record numbers of immigrants in the US illegally. He has argued that the legal entry parole programs launched under his Democratic predecessor overstepped the boundaries of federal law and called for their termination in a 20 January executive order.Trump said on 6 March that he would decide “very soon” whether to strip the parole status from some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled to the US during the conflict with Russia. Trump’s remarks came in response to a Reuters report that said his administration planned to revoke the status for Ukrainians as soon as April.Biden launched a parole entry program for Venezuelans in 2022 and expanded it to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those nationalities. Diplomatic and political relations between the four countries and the United States have been strained.The new legal pathways came as Biden tried to clamp down on illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border.The Trump administration’s decision to strip the legal status from half a million migrants could make many vulnerable to deportation if they choose to remain in the US. It remains unclear how many who entered the US on parole now have another form of protection or legal status. More

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      US blocks Canadian access to cross-border library, sparking outcry

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      The US has blocked Canadian access to a library straddling the Canada-US border, drawing criticism from a Quebec town where people have long enjoyed easy entry to the space.The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is located between Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont. It was built deliberately to straddle the frontier between the two countries – a symbol of cooperation and friendship between Canada and the US.The library’s entrance is on the Vermont side. Previously, Canadian visitors were able to enter using the sidewalk and entrance on the American side but were encouraged to bring documentation, according to the library’s website.Inside, a line of electrical tape demarcates the international boundary. About 60% of the building, including the books, is located in Canada. Upstairs, in the opera house, the audience sits in the US while the performers are in Canada.Under the new rules, Canadians will need to go through a formal border crossing before entering the library.“This closure not only compromises Canadian visitors’ access to a historic symbol of cooperation and harmony between the two countries but also weakens the spirit of cross-border collaboration that defines this iconic location,” the town of Stanstead said in a press release on Thursday.US Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to queries posed on Friday.In a statement to Reuters, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the US was responding to drug trafficking.“Drug traffickers and smugglers were exploiting the fact that Canadians could use the US entrance without going through customs. We are ending such exploitation by criminals and protecting Americans,” the statement said.The department provided no evidence of drug trafficking or smuggling and did not immediately respond to a request for additional information.In 2018 a Quebec man named Alexis Vlachos pleaded guilty in a Vermont court to charges relating to a plot to use the library to smuggle backpacks full of handguns into Canada on at least two occasions. He was later sentenced to 51 months in a US prison.Relations between the United States and Canada, longtime allies, have deteriorated since Donald Trump threatened to annex Canada as the 51st state and imposed tariffs.The library is a relic of a time when Americans and Canadians could cross the border with simply a nod and a wave at border agents, residents say. It was the gift of a local family in the early 1900s to serve the nearby Canadian and American communities.A small group of American and Canadian protesters gathered outside on Friday.Peter Welch, a Democratic senator from Vermont, called reports of the closure troubling.“Vermont loves Canada. This shared cultural institution celebrates a partnership between our two nations,” Welch said on X. More

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      ‘Deported because of his tattoos’: has the US targeted Venezuelans for their body art?

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      Like many Venezuelans of his generation, Franco José Caraballo Tiapa is a man of many tattoos.There is one of a rose, one of a lion, and another – on the left side of the 26-year-old’s neck – of a razor blade that represents his work as a barber.Two other tattoos pay tribute to Caraballo’s eldest daughter, Shalome: a pocket watch featuring the time of her birth and some black lettering on his chest that spells out the four-year-old’s name.“He’s just a normal kid … he likes tattoos – that’s it,” said Martin Rosenow, a Florida-based attorney who represents the Venezuelan asylum seeker – one of scores shipped to El Salvador by the Trump administration last weekend as part of his hard-line immigration crackdown.View image in fullscreenCaraballo’s fondness for body art may have been his undoing. For when the father of two was detained by US immigration officials in Dallas last month, they appear to have taken those tattoos as proof that he was a member of Venezuela’s most notorious gang, Tren de Aragua.An official Department of Homeland Security document issued in early February and reviewed by the Guardian states: “[The] subject [Caraballo] has been identified as a Member/Active of Tren de Aragua” although it does not explain how agents reached that conclusion. The same document notes that Caraballo – who it calls a “Deportable/Excludable Alien” – has several tattoos and no known criminal history “at this time”.Rosenow rejected the idea that the images inked on to his client’s skin indicated gang membership. “It’s specious – there’s no basis [for this conclusion],” he said. “Experts in Venezuela who study the gang have all stated that there are no tattoos that associate gang members. It’s not like the Central American MS-13 gang where tattoos are relevant in their organization.”“Tren de Agua has no [specific] tattoos,” Rosenow continued. “If you see pictures [of actual Tren de Aragua members arrested in the US], they’re shirtless and many of them don’t even have tattoos.“I’m nauseated by it all. I’m distressed for these individuals. I’m sad for what this means. As an American, for me it’s disgraceful that we would violate human rights so flagrantly on an international level.”Caraballo, who hails from the Venezuelan state of Bolívar and entered the US over its southern border in October 2023, is one of several Venezuelans whom immigration officials appear to have identified as gang members based on little more than their nationality and their tattoos.Daniel Alberto Lozano CamargoDaniel Alberto Lozano Camargo, a 20-year-old asylum seeker from Maracaibo in western Venezuela, lived in Houston, Texas where he washed cars for a living, advertising his services on Facebook.His partner, a US citizen called Leslie Aranda, said he was arrested last November after being contacted by a supposed client. She has not heard from him since last Friday, when Donald Trump invoked sweeping wartime powers called the Alien Enemies Act to deport people considered a threat, such as members of Tren de Aragua, which was last month designated a foreign terrorist organization.Like other Venezuelans now detained and at risk of deportation, Lozano has several tattoos, said Aranda, 25. He has the name of his partner’s daughter, Danessy, on one arm. A rose. The name of his niece, Eurimar, with a crown over the letter E. Praying hands on his neck. His father’s name, Adalberto, and his initials. Lozano also has the date of his anniversary with Aranda: 19 January 2023. Another tattoo reads “King of Myself.”“I know his father’s name is significant to him because he died when Daniel was young. And I also know he didn’t really like the rose tattoo because a friend who was practising did it. Daniel loves art and tattoos – that’s why he has them,” Aranda said.Lozano’s mother, Daniela, who is also in the US, said: “They violated his human rights – it’s an injustice. He doesn’t belong to any gang.”Neri José Alvarado BorgesThe sister of Neri José Alvarado Borges, another Venezuelan deported to El Salvador, said the 24-year-old also had tattoos that relatives suspect may have led to him being ​wrongly identified as a criminal.​One says “Family”, another says “Brothers” and a third, on his left thigh, features the name of his younger brother, Neryelson, who is autistic, and the rainbow-colored​ infinity symbol of the autism acceptance movement.“None of these tattoos has anything at all to do with the Tren de Aragua,” said his sister, Lisbengerth Montilla, 20. “But for them [immigration authorities] anyone with a tattoo is connected to Tren de Aragua.”Montilla said her brother was no gangster. In fact, he was a psychology​ student who had been forced to abandon his studies and migrate to the US nine months ago because of Venezuela’s economic collapse.After trekking through the perilous Darién Gap jungle and entering the US, Alvarado, who has no criminal history, built a life in Dallas where he worked in a bakery.“Many of us have come here because of the situation back in our country,” said Montilla, who also lives in the US. “There were times when we didn’t even have food to eat or have the money to buy anything. Many people fled because of the dictatorship in Venezuela, seeking a better future.​“Not all of those people [deported to El Salvador] are criminals – and not all Venezuelans are bad people. We are from a decent, hard-working and upstanding family. We’ve never had problems with anybody.”Luis Carlos José Marcano SilvaView image in fullscreenLuis Carlos José Marcano Silva, a 26-year-old barber from the Venezuelan island of Margarita, was detained at an immigration hearing in Miami last month. His tattoos also seemingly played a role in his detention and deportation to El Salvador.One, on Marcano’s belly, shows the face of Jesus of Nazareth. Another, on his arm, shows an infinity symbol while a third features the name of his daughter, Adelys. His chest is emblazoned with the image of a crown.“[At the hearing] all they kept telling him was that he belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang. When his wife contacted the lawyer, they said it was probably because of his tattoos,” said Marcano’s mother, Adelys del Valle Silva Ortega, denying that her son has any links to the crime group or even a criminal record.“I feel frustrated, desperate. I imagine they are not treating him well. I’ve already seen videos of that prison,” Silva said of the notorious Salvadoran “anti-terrorism” jail where her son is now thought to be incarcerated. “I think of him every moment, praying to the Virgin of the Valley [a Venezuelan patron saint] to protect him.”Jerce Reyes BarriosThe lawyer for a fifth Venezuelan man deported to El Salvador, a former professional footballer called Jerce Reyes Barrios, 36, has also claimed his tattoos played a role in sealing his fate.Reyes’s tattoos include one of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “Dios” (God). In a sworn declaration, his California-based attorney, Linette Tobin, said the Department of Homeland Security had alleged this tattoo was proof of gang membership.“In reality, he chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favourite soccer team, Real Madrid,” Tobin said in her statement on Wednesday.Tobin rejected the idea that her client was a gang member and said he had fled Venezuela in early 2024 after being detained at an anti-government demonstration by security forces. Reyes was subsequently “taken to a clandestine building where he was tortured” with electric shocks and suffocation.Tobin said US immigration officials had reviewed her client’s social media posts and found one in which he made “a hand gesture that they allege is proof of gang membership”.“In fact, the gesture is a common one that means I Love You in sign language and is commonly used as a rock’n’roll symbol,” Tobin said.Francisco Javier García CasiqueSebastián García Casique, the brother of a sixth Venezuelan deported to El Salvador, said his sibling, Francisco Javier García Casique, also had tattoos, including of a rose, a compass and a phrase reading: “God chooses his toughest battles for his best warriors.”A fourth tattoo says: “Vivir el momento” (Live in the Moment). A fifth says in English: “Family”.In September 2021 García posted an Instagram video of a tattoo of a timepiece being inked on to his right arm by an artist in Peru, where he then lived. “My tattoo in tribute to my two grandmas who I love and miss a lot,” García wrote.Anyelo Sarabia GonzálezIn a sworn declaration, the sister of Anyelo Sarabia González, Solanyer Michell Sarabia González, said her 19-year-old brother had been detained by immigration agents at the start of this year in Dallas and that those agents had asked “about a tattoo that is visible on his hand” showing a rose with money as its petals.“He had that tattoo done … because he thought it looked cool,” González’s sister said, adding that she believed her brother had been sent to El Salvador “under the false pretence that he was a member of Tren de Aragua”.“The tattoo has no meaning or connection to any gang,” said González, 25. Two other tattoos on her brother’s body – of the phrases “strength and courage” and “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” – were also not gang-related, she said.Franco José Caraballo TiapaRosenow also saw no indication that his client – who he said had sought asylum on the basis of political persecution after taking part in opposition protests – was involved in the Venezuelan gang. He said Caraballo’s “cheesy” and romantic Instagram posts indicated he was not “a vicious gang member”.A Venezuelan criminal background check issued earlier this month indicates Caraballo has no criminal record there. Francisco Javier García Casique’s family has also published evidence that he had no criminal record back home.The White House has described the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador as “heinous monsters” and terrorists but has yet to release detailed information about their identities, let alone their alleged crimes.On Thursday afternoon CBS News published an internal government list of the 238 Venezuelan deportees, which included the names of all of the men in this story.On Monday, a senior official from immigration and customs enforcement, Robert Serna, admitted that “many” of those removed from the US under the Alien Enemy Act did not have criminal records in the US, but he nevertheless said they were Tren de Aragua members.The fact that those people did not have a criminal record “is because they have only been in the country for a short period of time”, Serna said. More