When Franco José Caraballo Tiapa arrived at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in early February for a routine check-in, he thought he had little reason to worry.

Caraballo, 26, had arrived in the U.S. in 2023 after fleeing persecution in Venezuela, lived with his wife in Dallas, and had no criminal record, his immigration attorney Martin Rosenow told The Intercept. He’d checked in with ICE regularly while waiting on his asylum claim. But when an agent took special interest in his tattoos, they detained him and put him on a bus to the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas — and eventually on a plane to CECOT.

For Caraballo and at least half a dozen other men, U.S. officials’ assumptions about their body art played a significant role in classifying them as gang members and disappearing them to the notorious prison in El Salvador. The Intercept found that a very different standard applies for the federal agents tasked with keeping migrants out of the country and rounding up those targeted by President Donald Trump’s deportation obsession.

On a public “grooming standards” webpage aimed at prospective Customs and Border Protection agents, the agency advises that any tattoos and brandings must be concealed if they are “obscene or gang-related.” In other words, agents are allowed to have the very markings for which Caraballo and others were disappeared into a Salvadoran gulag — as long as they keep them out of sight.