Tennessee Man Has Been Stranded in Guatemala Since 2022 Over Tattoo
A major legal challenge seeks to overturn a Biden-era case that helped lay the groundwork for Trump’s tattoo-based deportation regime.
This morning, Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill spoke with Mohammad Alsaafin, a Palestinian independent journalist and senior producer for AJ+, about the state of “ceasefire” negotiations in Gaza, why disarmament is a red line for Palestinians, and the legacies of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Qassam Brigades commander Mohammed Deif. You can watch the full interview here.
Amid relentless bombardment and a nearly two-month long total siege, Palestinians in Gaza are struggling to survive under impossible conditions. When asked by a colleague what they could do for Gaza now, retired director of Al Shifa Hospital, Dr. Medhat Abbas, wrote back:
Food
Food
Food
Medicine
Shelter
Water
Electricity
Fuel
I have no comment..Two Million people are succumbing to their destiny..
Gaza City-based journalist Rasha Abu Jalal reported Monday on how Palestinians are inventing new techniques to cope with their circumstances in a world that has abandoned them.
On Monday, Drop Site South Asia correspondents Siddharthya Roy and Waqas Ahmed joined Ryan Grim and Krystal Ball on Breaking Points. Sid appeared from New Delhi and Waqas from New York, discussing the latest on the India-Pakistan crisis.
In today’s story, we take a look at the way that immigration officials have been abusing their power for years, designating people terrorists with no credible evidence in effectively un-reviewable ways. A new lawsuit is aimed at bringing due process into the conversation.
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In late 2022, Daisy Rodriguez, a U.S. citizen and owner of a small restaurant in the town of Sweetwater, Tennessee, said goodbye to her husband for what she thought would be a short stay in Guatemala. He had recently received approval to attend an immigration interview that would grant him a green card to live in the United States. Little did Rodriguez know her husband would not be returning to the U.S. Upon arriving at the consulate in Guatemala, her husband, Santos Maudilio Saucedo Rivas, was accused by U.S. consular officials of membership in a gang based on a tattooed set of initials on his body.
The officials denied Rivas a green card, separating him from his American wife and the restaurant they ran together, while cutting him off from the U.S., the country where he had spent nearly his entire adult life.
Rivas’s case is now the subject of a lawsuit filed today by the American Immigration Council and Consular Accountability Project, which is suing the U.S. State Department in the Eastern District of Tennessee. The lawsuit alleges that U.S. officials failed to review evidence showing that Rivas was never part of the “Barrio Azteca” gang and that the government violated the U.S. Constitution by denying him a green card after having him travel to Guatemala for the interview.
The case is a potentially landmark legal challenge, as the Trump administration has expanded use of tattoo evaluations and other flimsy evidentiary claims as a means to ramp up its deportation machine. Rivas’s green card was initially denied in 2023, under the Biden administration. Cases like his, his lawyer argues, where consular officials are granted leeway to use their view of his tattoos to deny him the ability to return to the U.S., helped set the precedent for the broader immigration crackdown now taking place under Donald Trump.
“He was eligible for his green card—the only reason he left home and went back there was to get the card—but he was prejudged by consular officials, who said that he looked like a criminal, and was denied,” said Eric Lee, legal counsel on Rivas’s case. “The government has a de facto policy that they don't listen to any evidence that you’re innocent if they accuse you of being a gang member. They never listened to the evidence that he submitted, and now he has been there since 2022, just spinning his wheels.”
Lee shared a lengthy dossier of potentially exculpatory evidence about Rivas. Rivas, who had never been to prison, was accused by consular officials of membership in the gang based on what is alleged by he and his lawyers to be a misinterpretation of the initials “B.A.” on his body, initials that they say refer to a personal nickname, “Bau.” The dossier includes sworn testimony from experts on the organization who stated that his membership would have been impossible, because the Barrio Azteca gang exclusively recruited people of Mexican heritage—and then only from prisons. The file has never been reviewed by government officials who made a determination on his case, according to Lee, nor have any of the experts on the gang who provided testimony about his innocence been contacted.
Rivas had been living in the U.S. since 2006, after coming to the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant fleeing gang violence in Guatemala. He and Rodriguez have been together since 2011, and married since 2017. His initial entry to the country as an undocumented immigrant did not preclude him from subsequently legalizing his status after he married an American. But, according to immigration regulations, Rivas needed to return to his home country to have his green card interview and adjust his status.
During a series of interviews after returning to Guatemala in 2022, Rivas was accused by U.S. consular officials of membership in the gang due to his tattoo. In one such session, the lawsuit alleges, a U.S. official accused him of lying, and then insulting the intelligence of consular officials by denying his membership in the gang.
In 2023, Rivas was informed that he had officially been denied his green card and would not be allowed to return to his wife and home in Tennessee. Since then, he has been stranded in Guatemala, with little means of supporting himself and no clarity about when or whether they will be able to reunite. Even the ability to speak on a regular basis as a married couple is constricted due to limited access to communications in the region of Guatemala he is based.
“We are going on three years since he left and wasn't able to come back, and it's been very tough. He is not doing so well, we are just waiting for something to happen, and for him to be able to come back,” said Rodriguez. “In the meantime he has tried to make a living out there, he opened a small food shack, but it didn't work. Now he has some debt, and he's been trying, but it's just very different out there.”
Although the 2023 denial decision on Rivas’s case was made under the Biden administration, the tactic of using tattoos as a determining factor in immigration decisions has now escalated further under Trump. In recent months, numerous individuals have now been deported from the U.S. on accusations that their tattoos were evidence of membership in Tren de Aragua or other criminal organizations, including in cases where experts have stated that the tattoos in question point do not prove any affiliation with the organization. In March, Drop Site reported on a goalkeeper who was sent to the notorious CECOT detention facility in El Salvador, under an agreement between the U.S. and Salvadoran governments.
“This is a policy that Democrats helped prepare over multiple administrations, though what Trump is doing is of a qualitatively different character. The use of tattoos to remove people under the Alien Enemies Act is certainly new,” said Lee. “I don’t draw attention to the role of Obama and Biden to diminish what Trump is doing, but at same time Trump didn't fall out of the sky. These policies have had a bipartisan character.”
With their fate determined by a seemingly arbitrary and unchallengeable decision by U.S. consular officials, Rivas’s lawsuit is a final attempt to fix what they say is a terrible mistake that has derailed their life.
“I just want my husband to come back. The American people want legal migration, and we tried, but it seemed like it just didn't work,” Rodriguez said. “There was a mistake, we tried to submit evidence to try and clarify and get the government to change their decision, but they didn't review it or they didn't care. So what else can we do, how do we show them that they made a mistake?”
Thank you for informing us about this important case and issue. Arrogance and ignorance make for a deadly, but heady, brew. I wish them both the best of success.
"Rivas’s case is now the subject of a lawsuit filed today by the American Immigration Council and Consular Accountability Project," Let's help them with this:
https://immcouncil.donorsupport.co/page/FUNTHDVJNQB
Try telling this to Blue MAGA...
"“This is a policy that Democrats helped prepare over multiple administrations, though what Trump is doing is of a qualitatively different character. The use of tattoos to remove people under the Alien Enemies Act is certainly new,” said Lee. “I don’t draw attention to the role of Obama and Biden to diminish what Trump is doing, but at same time Trump didn't fall out of the sky. These policies have had a bipartisan character.”"