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US law enforcement officials have claimed that the use of certain emojis could signal affiliation with Tren de Aragua (TdA), a Venezuelan gang, according to internal records reviewed by the Guardian.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the US Army and other agencies have alleged in briefings, threat warnings and training materials for law enforcement that specific symbols used on social media are associated with Tren de Aragua, a group Donald Trump has regularly cited to support his immigration crackdown. The emoji claims, repeated by the New York police department (NYPD), were made in four reports disseminated among law enforcement in 2024 and 2025 and obtained through records requests by Property of the People, a government transparency non-profit. Emojis that officials claimed were “commonly” used by Tren de Aragua and part of members’ “code language” include trains, swords, ninjas, aliens and strawberries.
Gang experts and immigration attorneys who reviewed the records said the claims were “ludicrous”, “uneducated” and “baseless” and raised concerns that authorities could cite emojis to erroneously label people as Tren de Aragua members – allegations that can have dire consequences, including deportation. The emoji references echo the Trump administration’s widely scrutinized claims about tattoos: US immigration officials have suggested innocuous imagery constituted proof of Tren de Aragua membership and cited tattoos while deporting people to a notorious El Salvador prison.
Experts have said there is no evidence that Tren de Aragua, which began in the Tocorón prison in the state of Aragua, has a clearly organized structure in the US. But the Trump administration has claimed that the group poses a major threat and sought to deport alleged members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime law that allows for due process rights to be bypassed. Trump has also cited the gang to justify the US military’s recent lethal strike against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, while Venezuela’s interior minister has said none of the 11 people killed were Tren de Aragua members. The president announced a second fatal strike on a Venezuelan boat earlier this week, but did not specify whether Tren de Aragua had been a target there.
The first reference to emojis in the records comes from a July 2024 “situational awareness” alert from the NYPD, which was distributed to law enforcement across the country and warned of Tren de Aragua threats in New York City. NYPD’s intelligence and counter-terrorism bureau “has observed members of TdA in New York City [using] social media messaging platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to depict allegiance to the gang”, the alert said. “TdA members often utilize emojis such as trains, ninjas, slot machines, double swords, shields, ogre/mask face, and crowns.” Members also “use South American slang and Arabic language terms to mask their identities on social media”, the NYPD added. In a section about Tren de Aragua “symbols, iconography and signs”, NYPD cited tattoos featuring Michael Jordan, guns and trains, and then printed images of seven emojis: alien face, shield, crown, hand making the rocker gesture, swords, ninja and train. In August 2024, US Army North, the domestic defense command, repeated warnings about the same seven emojis, saying the train was a reference to Tren de Aragua’s connections to a railroad union; the group’s name translates to “the train of Aragua”.
In December 2024, the FBI and the army’s National Ground Intelligence Center held a Tren de Aragua briefing in Seattle and widely shared the emoji warnings, including with officials from Washington, Oregon, Alaska, the US Bureau of Prisons, the Department of Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration, email records show. The FBI materials described Tren de Aragua “indicators”, which it said include “gunshot wounds to the wrists and ankles” and a range of tattoos. The FBI said members communicated via encrypted messaging and used “certain emojis to code language”. The FBI emojis list was slightly different from the one shared by the NYPD and Army North and included images of a building and strawberries. It did not specify what the emojis allegedly represented. The report added: “A sole indicator does not determine TdA presence or affiliation; rather law enforcement and government officials should evaluate the totality of behavior and circumstances before assessing TdA presence or affiliation.” In March 2025, under Trump, CBP shared the FBI’s emojis guidance in a briefing on Tren de Aragua’s “growing threat to US national security”.
An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on the records or answer questions about its TdA warnings, writing in an email: “While our standard practice is not to comment on specific products, to include the veracity of them, the FBI regularly shares information with our law enforcement partners to assist in protecting the communities they serve.” The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement that its “intelligence assessments go well beyond social media, tattoos, emojis, or any symbolism”. “We are confident in our law enforcement’s intelligence, and we aren’t going to share intelligence reports and undermine national security. That would be insane,” the statement continued. Tren de Aragua commits violent crimes, and Trump designated it a foreign terrorist group “on day one”, DHS added. A CBP spokesperson said in an email that it works with law enforcement partners to take “proactive steps to detect and positively identify members of Tren de Aragua”, adding: “Specific information used to determine membership in foreign terrorist organizations is law enforcement sensitive. CBP has comprehensive procedures using a range of criteria and methods. However, there is no single source for verification.” A spokesperson for Army North declined to comment, deferring to the NYPD, which did not respond to inquiries.
Revealed: US law enforcement claimed emojis could signal Tren de Aragua affiliation
Claims are ‘an unsophisticated, uneducated approach that demonstrates a lack of knowledge’, says one professor
www.theguardian.com
