Tattooed, Queer, and Targeted: The Cop Who Made It Up

Reports say a former police officer who was fired from the force in Milwaukee was instrumental in the imprisonment of gay hairdresser and makeup artist Andry José Hernández Romero in a brutal foreign prison – even though he was not charged with any crime.

It appears that Charles Cross Jr. is the officer who flagged Hernández Romero as a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua – a claim that was based in no evidence but Hernandez Romero's tattoos, which were religious in nature and not linked to gang activity at all.

USA Today reported that "the credibility of Charles Cross Jr., who signed the report, was so bad, prosecutors flagged him on a list of police who had been accused of lying, breaking the law or acting in a way that erodes their credibility to testify in Milwaukee County."

The newspaper detailed that Cross "was fired from his position as a Milwaukee police sergeant in 2012 after driving his car into a family's home while intoxicated. He appealed the decision and resigned in the process, according to the department."

"At the time, Cross also was being investigated for claiming overtime he allegedly hadn't earned," USA Today went on to add. "Earlier misdeeds had landed him on the Milwaukee County Brady List, a compilation of law enforcement officers deemed by county prosecutors to have credibility problems."

Cross is currently "an employee of CoreCivic, which runs many of the immigration detention centers for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement," and he's reportedly the one who "typed his name over the title 'INVESTIGATOR' on the form that implicated Andry José Hernández," the writeup went on to say.

"It's unknown what, if any, training Cross has had in identifying gang members," USA Today noted.

USA Today also reported that there are many things that are unclear about Hernandez Romero's case, including "whether Hernández was also evaluated by federal agents, whether Cross and another CoreCivic employee, Arturo Torres, were Hernández's sole screeners, or whether other corroborating evidence was used to accuse him of ties to the criminal group."

What is known of the case is that Hernández Romero was arrested when he tried to keep an asylum appointment, detained for six months, and then summarily deported under Donald Trump's program of sending men to El Salvador's CECOT megaprison. No one, including his family, has heard from him since.

The only known reason for Hernández Romero's deportation – despite his legal presence in the U.S., and despite having a clean record – are his tattoos, which reports say are linked to a Christian tradition in his home town. The ink he sported spoke to his religious devotion – but immigration agents, including Cross and possibly others, claimed they were proof that Hernández Romero was part of Tren de Aragua, a vicious gang the president has claimed is "invading" the United States. Based on that characterization, the president invoked the Alien Enemies Act from 1798 to justify deporting migrants to El Salvador, with no attempt at due process – a move that critics decry as unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court upheld the deportations on procedural grounds, but, in a separate ruling, ordered the administration to work to return another man who was accused of being a member of Tren de Agua with no evidence to back up the claim and deported to El Salvador.

The current administration has claimed that although Maryland father of three Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a refugee from gang violence in his home country of El Salvador, was indeed improperly deported, the fact that he is now in the notorious prison and no longer in U.S. custody means that the U.S. has no jurisdiction to retrieve him. It was an argument the Court did not buy.

It's not just tattooed "men of military age" being swept up. Jasmine Mooney, a Canadian actor and business consultant, was arrested and detained for two weeks when she crossed into the U.S. to apply for a TN visa – a legal document available to Mexican and Canadian citizens for certain kinds of employment in the U.S. that Mooney had been granted in the past without difficulty. Mooney was detained for two weeks and has written a harrowing account of her time in custody despite – as CBS News reported – having "her visa paperwork and a job offer from a company in the U.S." with her at the time she was placed under arrest.

Watchdogs decry the use of private contractors in deciding the fates of immigrants swept up by ICE.

"People are being rendered to a torture prison on the basis of these flimsy and inaccurate determinations," USA Today quoted the National Immigration Law Center's Heidi Altman saying.

"Using private prison contractors to make those determinations is just another level of recklessness."