Revealed: US law enforcement claimed emojis could signal Tren de Aragua affiliation

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Fri 19 Sep 2025 07.30 EDT
Last modified on Fri 19 Sep 2025 13.19 EDT


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 officials 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.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/19/fbi-cbp-tren-de-aragua-emojis

[Bayard]

1. Quick!

We need an EO outlawing all emojis. They are evil, and turn kids liberal.

[LearnedHand]

7. Every post, every text, every email must now contain a dozen or each of these emoji

[Captain Zero]

10. Exactrly

[Klarkashton]

2. Seems to me that they haven't arrested a single one of those Tren de Aragua

people or anyone from the other bogeyman groups they crow about.

I say this since if they had they would have made a BIG deal about it. They tried to frame the one guy with a badly photo shopped MS13
Tattoo and it failed.

[BlueKota]

3. Uh oh

That Giorgio dude from "Ancient Aliens" is probably in big trouble.

[JoseBalow]

5. Dangerous criminal prison gang

[BlueKota]

6. 🤣🤣🤣

[yliza]

4. Here's my reply

🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾

[FakeNoose]

8. From the OP link, these are the emojis they're talking about...

[RainCaster]

9. My thoughts on this

🌮=💩🖕💩🖕😡🤬☣️☢️🚼

[AverageOldGuy]

11. ". . . the use of certain emojis could signal affiliation with Tren de Aragua . . . "

Like these emojis?

[littlemissmartypants]

12. This sh¡t is getting fn absurd.

[NJCher]

14. I keep looking

For the onion URL.

[LudwigPastorius]

13. The puke emoji...

How to know you are speaking to a member of IBS-13

[OldBaldy1701E]

15. "...concerns that authorities could cite emojis to erroneously label people as Tren de Aragua members..."

Well, d'uh!

That's why they are doing it!

[jeffreyi]

16. And the frog groyper emoji?

Are they cracking down on that one?