Judged by the content of their tattoos and the color of their skin

In the complicated calculus of immigration, asylum and visas, life-altering decisions now can seem predicated on whether the Trump administration likes the looks of you or, put simply, does not. Family man? Hard worker? Nonviolent offender? Complete unknown? So what. But one thing that most certainly matters for those presenting themselves at the border — or simply going about their life as best as they can once they’ve been given the green light to be in this country legally — is having forearms covered in tattoos.

The U.S. government can’t get over tattoos as a kind of bodily evidence of membership in violent gangs. The administration displays them at every turn as if they are all smoking guns of guilt. To be clear, some gang members are known to etch out their allegiances on their body, just as others signify their violent affiliations through their attire. Sometimes those symbols are read accurately. Sometimes they are not. Sometimes they remain in dispute. Just ask President Donald Trump’s own Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He knows what it’s like to be demonized for tattoos. His have been interpreted as celebrating white nationalism and Islamophobia. Hegseth begs to differ.

The tattoos of the greatest concern are those of crowns, which the Trump administration has linked to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, although many experts have cautioned that tattoos are not a reliable indicator of anything (see: Hegseth, above). Nonetheless, the government has presented pictures of detainees with these crown tattoos in immigration court as evidence that they are the "bad hombres" about whom Trump began warning in 2016. And that circumstantial evidence, the government has argued, gave the administration license to banish these men to an El Salvador mega prison.

This seems to be the case with Andry Hernandez Romero. The Venezuelan hairdresser had sought asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego. Romero, the administration argued, was part of a Venezuelan gang that was essentially at war with the United States. The evidence against Romero boiled down to the tattoos.

The gang Tren de Aragua does favor crown ink. But so, too, do those who simply like tattoos. Or, as Romero did, work in the world of beauty pageants.

Under the Biden administration, the tattoos raised a red flag when Romero initially sought asylum. They sparked a closer judicial review of his background. The judicial process was slowly unfurling. Under Trump, the tattoos fast tracked him to the warehouse of a prison in El Salvador. He was disappeared into an immigration system that has become a black box thanks, in part, to Trump having expanded his authority under the Alien Enemies Act, which dates to 1798.

Kilmar Abrego García, who is Salvadoran and was living in the United States legally, is married to a U.S. citizen. He also was sent to the mega-prison. He wasn’t in a gang, but he did have tattoos. The administration admitted that García’s deportation was a mistake, but it was a screw up officials declined to rectify. The U.S. government said it mistakenly sent a man to a hell-hole … and just shrugged. Perhaps if García had sandy hair, blue eyes and looked like Kid Rock, the administration would act.

The administration doesn’t seem to have much use for the folks from South Sudan, either. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he was revoking the visas of South Sudanese passport holders because their government refused to accept a man that the U.S. had deported.

Rubio accused the country, which has only been recognized as a sovereign state since 2011 and is believed to be teetering on the edge of civil war, of "taking advantage of the United States."

"Every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country, including the United States, seeks to remove them," Rubio said. "South Sudan’s transitional government has failed to fully respect this principle."

But South Sudan declined to allow the deportee at the center of this fight into the country because officials had determined the man was actually from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Or as Trump would say, another one of those "shithole countries." Ultimately, the Trump administration bullied South Sudan into relenting.

The president has been eager to shut the door on Afro-Caribbeans and Black Africans. He wants to swing it wide open for the White residents of South Africa.

Trump has expressed empathy and concern for them. He’s worried about their property rights as the country works to rectify the profound imbalance in wealth between the Black and White citizens caused by the legacy of apartheid. While whites make up 7.3% of the country’s population, they own some 72% of farms and agricultural land. South Africa is struggling to address the generational fallout from systemic racism. And Trump, who campaigned on a desire for the U.S. to keep its nose out of other country’s problems, has intervened.

"The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take appropriate steps, consistent with law, to prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program, for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination," Trump said in a statement. One presumes the president isn’t worried that these White refugees will make lunch out of anyone’s cat or dog as candidate Trump falsely claimed Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were doing.

For a president who is as much a casting director as a commander in chief, the sight of heavily tattooed men staring affectless into a camera from behind bars is haunting and an effective way to deliver his message. It’s not the tattoos alone; an illustrated body is hardly a rarity. It’s the rough artlessness of some of those tattoos, the humiliation of the forcibly shaved heads and uniformity of the white T-shirts that turn the prisoners into ciphers rather than singular individuals, each with their own unique, tragic story.

The administration transforms the image of South Sudanese and Black South Africans, those who might have elegant bearing and a determined spirit, and redefines their striving as something dangerous. Trump declares wont as a form of shame and a reasonable demand for reparations — or at least a bit of fairness and dignity — as an existential threat.

Trump knows how deeply looks matter. He exploits that truth. And he has tasked his administration with making the country see the absolute worst that his mind can imagine.

Robin Givhan is the senior critic-at-large for The Washington Post.