In March, in order to speedily deport 238 Venezuelan men under an 18th century law,

President Trump declared many of them to beat alien enemies.

He claimed there were members of a transnational criminal organization called Tren de Aragua,

which, he said, was conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United

States. But a New York Times investigation couldn't find any evidence linking many of the men

to that gang. Ali Rogan spoke with Julie Turkowitz, the Times-Andi's bureau chief based in

Bogota, Colombia, and the lead reporter on that investigation.

Thank you so much for joining us.

In your investigation for how many of these 238 men did you find connections to Trander Agua, and how did you go about making those determinations?

We spent a couple of weeks doing record searches in the U.S., in Venezuela, in Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia.

And what we found is that of the 238 individuals sent on March 15th to a prison in El Salvador, 32 of them appeared to have some kind of

serious criminal record. An even smaller number, just a handful, appeared to have some

possible connection to this gang, Trender Agua. And this is reporting to the best of our abilities,

barring any real information from the Trump administration.

You also reported on how the administration has been making these determinations,

what criteria they're using. Tell us about that.

Some of the documents that have come out in court filings in recent weeks

indicate that the Trump administration is using a rubric to essentially grade individuals

who law enforcement believes might be Treinderaagua. When the person gets to eight

whole points, they become a, quote, validated member of Treinderawa and thus are eligible to be

deported under the Trump administration's qualifications as an alien enemy.

And so four points, according to this rubric, are given for someone who has suspicious tattoos,

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