Trump posted a photo of Abrego Garcia’s hand with an MS-13 knuckle tattoo. Internet sleuths say it’s photoshopped

Alright, I'll take the bait. Let's all assume he has an MS-13 tattoo. What does this change? The dude still gets his constitutional rights, and his day in court. On US soil.

This is what they always do, get you arguing about something that doesn't matter. Just eats up time and energy about nothing.
- The goal is to use fear, hatred, bigotry etc as a means to normalize authoritarianism and the destruction of rights, in exchange for non-existent "security" and "protection".
  See terrorism and pedophilia.
- I think this whole Garcia deportation is part of that. It wasn't supposed to in the beginning, but they're cooking with what they have.
  Instead of talking about how fucking insane it is to deporting people to a death camp without any due process. We're now talking about how insane it is to deport someone who wasn't "supposed" to be deported to a death camp, and then refuse to do the bare minimum to get him back.
  They've made sure we ignore the hundreds of people getting removed with no sign of evidence against their crimes.
And on top of all that, even if somehow you could justify foregoing due process, the dude STILL can't legally be sent to El Salvador because of his withholding of removal to that country which I'm pretty sure is what the"administrative error" was that the white house admitted lol.

Here’s a closeup of the image

A Nigerian prince puts more effort into fooling people.

Wait, the letters are clearly digitally added on top of the photo, but aren't they just used to label the tattoos on each finger?
Not that would change anything...
- If they wanted to indicate a translation for the symbols, they could have done so off of the part of the image consisting of the hand. Trump said verbatim “he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles”. Not symbols for MS-13, the phrase itself. Additionally, the real tattoos are clearly not on the knuckles, but the photoshopped letters are. Trump believes the photoshopped letters are actual tattoos and/or wants to convince people of it.
  [EDIT: Trump 100% means to convince us that the photoshopped letters are actual tattoos. We are as cooked as the old coot’s brain.]
- Can you elaborate?
Omfg I literally had to double check this was really what trump was holding up. "internet sleuth" my ass, a ten year old could point out how stupidly fake this is.
- That was my first reaction, but apparently the letters were placed there to explain the tattoos "meaning".
  Supposedly:
  Marijuana stands for M Smiley face stands for S Cross stands for 1 for some reason Skull stands for 3 for some reason
  They forgot that:
  wouldn't the text be in Spanish and not English?
  MS 13 hand members are proud of being in it, they put giant letters on their chests, backs, face, if he wanted to hide it, why even bother having a tattoos? Wouldn't other gang members get upset that he is hiding it?
  I also couldn't find pictures of anyone else from MS13 who was using such cryptic tattoos.
  Also with the interpretation is that you can literally assign any meaning to it for example:
  Pot
  Ecstatic
  "t"
  Afterlife
  This shows that Abrego Garcia is actually an animal lover and supports PETA.
  But this is beside the point. The problem is he had no due process, and wasn't deported but human trafficked to a prison in 3rd world country.
  If they have undeniable proof give it to the court and then either deport him or put him in US jail if he committed a crime.
That doesn't even qualify as a Photoshop. It should be called an "MS Paint"
- “MS Paint? That sounds an awful lot like MS-13! Off to the El Salvador gulag with you, terrorist scum!”
There are five possibilities:
Trump was given this as proof that the guy is really a gang member, didn't ask if it was fake, presented it without vetting it
Trump ordered someone to find proof that he's in a gang and someone gave it to him as proof
Trump ordered someone to create proof that he's in a gang
Trump was given this as proof, he asked if it was fake, and was told the truth, and presented it anyway
Trump was given this as proof, asked if it was fake, was lied to, and presented it
All of these have problems.
- Its sad that those are all legitimate possibilities
Somehow this seems like lower effort than a sharpie.
OH, COME ON! That isn't even a plausible fake. Couldn't they find a third-grader to do a better job?
This is the HitlerPig 2.0 version of the hurricane weather map. I'm surprised he didn't just scribble on the photo with a Sharpie.

It kind of looks like annotation to imply that the symbols actually on his hand mean MS-13, but I'd easily believe Trump is dumb enough to think he has "M S 1 3" printed in Arial font on his fingers.

If it is an annotation...show us those court records, you fascist son of a bitch.

It's so obvious that the letters and numbers are there to show what the tattooed symbols represent. I feel like I'm in bizarro world that people don't understand that and think they've found some smoking gun.
It doesn't change the need for due process, but come on people.
- Trump's own words indicated that he thought the MS13 tattoos were on the knuckles, which is where the Arial font characters are. So either Trump doesn't know what a knuckle is, or he was speaking imprecisely, or he's a fucking moron, or all of the above.
  In any case, as someone pointed out above, it's unlikely MS13 would be working with acronyms in English for their tattoos, especially acronyms in English that only 50% work because Marijuana Smiley Cross Skull says MSCS, not MS13.
- Yeah, the story should have been, "Trump comes up with another distraction to avoid admitting he's violating the Constitution," or at least, "Trump too stupid to understand a picture and says stupid thing."
- But others of this gang don't have cryptic tattoos, so where are they getting this meaning from? Not to mention a quick search of MS13 tattoos does not show this.
- Yeah, that seems obvious to me too. I've got no clue how the symbols are supposed to represent the letters though. I've a friend who has similar symbols on her fingers and they don't stand for anything, they just look cool.
- Ultimately I think you're right, but on the other hand, do your really expect Mr Weather Map Sharpie to not try to pass off dumb blatant lies?
- The problem is, that's even dumber. No matter how you twist it, the whole thing falls apart at the skull. Mind you, even the others are already a massive stretch.
It looks like people believe the M S 1 3 annotations are what they are saying is on his hand. We're in some dire straits.
The annotations are bullshit tho
- The annotations are bullshit tho
  How so? Marijuana, Smile are pretty clear, the cross you can see in place of 1 on other MS13 tattoos (using image search of MS13 tattoos).
  The only one I'm not sure of is the skull, but the available image is a bit blurry. Maybe the 2 eye holes plus the nose hole?
- Yeah, they think that the evidence is the annotations and ignore them as being annotations as a bad faith argument.
  Do the symbols on his knuckles means "MS13"? That is up for debate without supporting evidence from those who have relevant knowledge and authority on the subject, which DHS has not validated as of yet but the arresting officers in a 2019 incident when he was arrested with two others that were also "MS13 affiliated" by the local PD; if that was out of authority or guilt by proximity is up for debate.
  Is it plausible that a gang member has coded tattoos? Absolutely because gangs do use symbols to code like white power people use 1488 and similar. To be fair members of MS13 and similar tend to be more blatant with their tattoos, but it may offer a tactical advantage to be more obtuse in tattoos depending on the individual's role in the organization. So him not having "MS13" tattooed on his face is not necessary absolute proof that he is unaffiliated.
  He was alleged to be affiliated to MS13 by an informant, who is advantaged by lying financially and legally. $100 bucks can make a guy busted for drug trafficking say anything to avoid the consequences of his actions.
  His wife censors his tattoos in her calls for his return, which implies she knows the tattoos are a optics problem and she has also avoided admitting or denying any past gang affiliation. Not damning, but draw enough points and you can draw a line.
  Could he have been a victim of circumstances and has a checkered past due to where he grew up and has been trying to reform himself and be a decent, honest, and lawful person? Absolutely, but his traffick stop in 2022 sure is questionable.
  At the end of the day he was here illegally and two judges have decided he was at one time an MS13 member based on the information available to them, which is greater than we are privileged to.
  You can disagree with deporting him because a prior administration decided he should not be immediately be deported, but administrations change and so can the decisions of a prior administration with a new administration.
  How he is treated in his home country is a concern, but that is a concern of his family and the people of El Salvador who advocate on behalf of the imprisoned, not the American government because he is not a naturalized citizen.
There are literally annotations under the symbols.
Marijuana, Smile, Cross

At this point, the guy could be a rabid neonazi pedophile for all I care: he should still not have been deported without a trial. People are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. Do your fucking job.

Why would a cop get deported?
- Or a senator.
People are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court.
That was in the last century or so.

It's nice to see Trump can learn and grow. It wasn't that long ago when he would have just scribbled it with a sharpie. Anyway, it must really annoy Trump that thanks to Senator Van Hollen's visit, where he proved he could do what Trump admitted that he himself could not, we now have unadulterated photos of Garcia's hand without the shitty photoshop.

So umm.... What's the problem? Return. Prove it in a court of law. Due process for all. It doesn't matter who the person is or what they've done. What matters is how the government acts.

The problem is that they are trying to do away with due process. They want to be able to throw anyone they want into a gulag in another country where they will disappear forever. They start with immigrants, claiming that they are gang members and terrorists. They are refusing to prove it because they want to set the precedent that they do not need to prove their claims. They start with alleged foreign gang members, then will come "homegrowns," as Trump has called them.
If we don't make them prove their claims now in a court of law, it'll be that much harder to do it later, and they know it.
- Sure. We are in agreement. That's exactly why it's important to adhere to our constitution. Due process is an instruction for how to operate our government when looking to use its violent capabilities upon individuals. "No person shall" has nothing to do with who the individual is, only how our government must go about depriving them of "life, liberty, or property", if it sees fit.
  Until we change our constitution, due process for all.

Ok, so what happened here is that police added letters to the photo explaining what each symbol means. Some idiots on twitter thought those added letters are the claimed MS-13 tattoo. It's not clear if Trump also thought that those letters were actually tattooed, probably yes.

Bruh. So they went from M to S to 1 to 3? Instead of A to B to C … to 1 to 2 to 3?
No. Don’t try to muddy the waters and spread more supposition as fact. Trump has already been proven to alter images to fit his own internal incorrect narrative, just look at that hurricane path incident from his last term. All evidence and common sense points to someone digitally editing this picture in order to fabricate support for this man’s illegal deportation.
- I think the point is that we all know they put in the MS13 digitally
  The argument isnt against that
  We all know it
  The argument is that the republicans arent arguing he literally has MS13 tattooed
  But that even they know that was added
  And thats its just added to help people figure out why the tattoos would represent MS13
  Its not that Republicans are saying the edited in part is part of the tattoo
  Just that the tattoos that are there represent MS13
And itd amazing to me how this is another of this shit is dumb, we dont need to make stuff up to complain about it being dumb
Like the excuses for the symbols dont make sense. We can just call that out. We dont need to lie.
Marijuana= M smiley = S Cross= 1 Skull = 3
Thats what the printed texts above each knuckle represents. These dumb people claiming it has poor photoshop... Has something loose in their head
- I'd like some independent decoding of these symbols. He could be celebrating his Master of Science in Computer Science.
  (Also, the whole Trump argument is irrelevant because they already admitted he was "deported" in error)
- Actual MS-13 gang members don't bother encoding their tattoos. They straight up say "MS-13". The gang is many things, ambiguous and shy are not two of them.
  They're kind of like white supremacists in that regard, they don't try to hide who they are:

It’s sharpie gate all over again!

His skills have improved. He learned to use ms paint.

As it is just a photo of a hand, it could be anyones hand.

- You need a hand? Heck, I'll get you a hand by lunch.
Looking at the photo on top of this thread, which shows his hand, it seems like he has the tatoos, but not the letters MS 13.
So that picture was most likely of his hands, and then someone added the MS13 to it.
- I just pointed out how meaningless it is to just show some random dudes hand.

What insults me more than anything is that he thinks I am so stupid that I would accept that obviously doctored photo as real. I felt the same way when he pitched his hurricane weather map with his Sharpie edit.

Hey, HitlerPig, we aren't all as stupid as you, and the people around you.

How much more do they need to impeach this liar ?

Look. I wish he could be removed by impeachment. But we need to accept that he's an outlaw.
He is a clear proponent of extrajudicial capital punishment.
Only an overdose of his own medicine will take him down.
- The only two things that could remove Trump early is a military coup, an armed revolution, or both.
- The SCOTUS immunity superpowers aren't the gift he thinks. All they did was remove the civilized options for his removal, leaving nothing but the worst case scenario options for him.

Even if. Have these people never heard of “ex gang members” I know a guy with gang tattoos who left the gang life 20 years ago. Should he suffer now because of his tattoos?

Well lets see, is he brown?

Even if that's real, which doesn't look like it, what's keeping them from forcing Mr. Garcia onto a chair, hold him down, while they tattoo it?

This administration and their dictator allies have shown to have no constraints, no guardrails, time and time again. Consistently. You can always blindly trust them to bs and lie their way through anything.

You gonna tell me people who tried to stage Mr. Garcia sipping some Margaritas by a hotel pool wouldn't stoop so low as to place fake tattoos on him? Yeah, that's the thing with dishonesty - even if you tell the truth once it's still gonna be called into question. The boy who cried wolf, and all that.

It's the default font. They didn't even bother to select an appropriate "gang" font.

It’s more like Microsoft Paint…it doesn’t even look slightly real. That’s if it even is his hand.

It's his hand. You can find other angles of it in the same article. It seems to me that the ms-13 edited onto his digits is meant to be a translation of the symbology of his tattoos:
Marijuana leaf = M
Smiley face = S
Cross = 1
Skull = 3
Is that an accurate representation of what his tattoos mean? I have no idea, I'm not an expert on gang symbology. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. The presence of a gang tattoo is something that could be submitted as evidence in court - which is a right the accused was never afforded.
What I am sure of, is that trump intentionally presented this information in such a vague manner so as to muddy the waters so he can come back later and claim his claims were misrepresented by the "lying, dishonest media" - which is itself dishonest.
It's an inkblot test. His detractors will take the claim at face value, and his supporters will dig in and claim we're stupid for not immediately taking his claims as gospel. He doesn't care if his claims hold up in court. He only cares about the court of public opinion, and right now, he's defining that conversation.
- Why does "Cross = 1, Skull = 3"? I did my best to google it but every result is comments from posts made within the last day.
  What I did find was this quote in https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-posts-image-kilmar-abrego-175852020.html :
  "The four symbols – “Marijuana,” “Smiley,” “Cross” and “Skull” – have not been found in any law enforcement guidelines or manuals to stand in for MS-13 gang identification."

So first things first man, if you have gang ink they photograph that shit and validate them. He was arrested in 2019 so, show me his ink and the photos they took of it when they arrested him.

They couldn't use AI to doctor the image because everyone would instantly see the 7 fingers and laugh.

Trumps fascist base? No way. They believe him not matter what. They'd see 7 fingers and say he was the anti-christ or something just as stupid.

Even if it wasn't. We don't throw people in jail, much less deport them for tattoos. I know some people in thr Trump shitshow who should go to jail for their tattoos if this is what they want to start doing.

Elon should have picked his gooner squad for their skills instead of their sycophantcy.

Trump - "I bet photoshop is one of those computer thingies...I definitely didn't use that."

Also, weren't they already claiming he was part of some Venezuelan gang? MS-13 is an American gang of jailed Latinos.

Who do I trust?

A lying asswipe who wouldn't know the truth if it slapped him in his orange face?

A man I don't know that has been sent to a foreign nation's prison for no reason?

Easy choice.

the individual is not the issue. it's the process. i'm not going to go to bat for some rando who might very well be involved in nefarious shit, but i will damn sure defend the idea that every person is allowed a chance to defend themself. this is the issue. people need to stop treating this dude like a saint. it could very well backfire.
in fact, leftists and liberals in general need to stop automatically assuming the opposite of everything a conservative claims is true. that's a fucking trap and it's illogical.
Why do you think the wife tries to cover his hand in photos? https://redstate.com/beccalower/2025/04/18/leftists-are-losing-their-minds-over-trump-photo-of-abrego-garcias-ms-13-tattoos-here-are-the-receipts-n2188040
- Why would she be covering a coded tattoo? Non-gang members would have no idea what it meant anyway. Can YOU explain why the cross represents a 1 and the skull represents a 3?
- That theory has been completely been debunked:
  https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/global-trends/did-trump-share-a-fake-photo-of-deported-kilmar-abrego-garcias-ms-13-tattoo-heres-the-shocking-truth/articleshow/120490488.cms

You mean the US government had someone they considered a terrorist and instead of holding them, they released them?

I really have to think at this point there's some really heinous shit they're doing while everyone hyperfocuses on this. It's the only logical reason they'd keep up the charade after it's been proven it's absolute fucking bullshit.

I mean at least he didn't use a sharpie this time....

Never mind the top, what's up with the words underneath? No one would have their tattoo pics labeled for clarity like that.

Actually these supposed to explain his tattoos, but the whole thing is still flimsy, see: https://lemm.ee/comment/19828278

You wanna bring up possibility of criminal history as an argument against someone being entitled to their rights as a US citizen? Let's not throw big and obvious stones in very precarious glass houses.

Can someone make a photo of trump holding up a photo of himself with a MS-13 tatoo, plz?

A TATTOO?! GUILTY! FEED HIM TO THE LIONS!

Even if it wasn't, it would still be won't to kidnap and throw him into a concentration camp without due process.

These people are so fucking stupid. Footage from the Van Hollan meeting will come out soon and show this is clearly not a thing.

Does the shadow in the belly button match the shadow cast by the hand? Does he have an "outie"? Caveat: I'm not a Photoshop sleuth

Oh my god that looks so fake. The MS13 is so to clean and clear.

Absolute baby-town frolics.

Why would they Photoshop anything? Couldn't that just be a picture of a tattoo'd hand; there's nothing to identify Garcia.

Look at the photo. It has computer font written ontop of a hand.
From the picture above it appears to actually be a photograph of Garcia's hand.

It's not photoshopped. Why do you think in the wife's posts, she tries to cleverly cover his hand? The guy got pulled over with 8 people in his car also, traveling from Texas to Maryland, and when asked for their addresses, everyone of them gave his address in Maryland. The guy was arrested with other MS13 gang members to and was identified by an informant as being member of the gang. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck.... https://redstate.com/beccalower/2025/04/18/leftists-are-losing-their-minds-over-trump-photo-of-abrego-garcias-ms-13-tattoos-here-are-the-receipts-n2188040

You are missing the point. Let’s first ignore the fact that the link you provided is anecdotal and contains not one thread of proof, we are supposed to be a society of law, and if he is a criminal there needs to be due process and he should NOT be sent to a concentration camp.
- Not missing the point at all. The Laken Rilley Act was passed for a reason. He doesn't need to be convicted of anything to be deported. He only needs to be arrested
https://lemmy.world/comment/16567783
- Lol, reassuring yourself with the left-wing bias website I see. Just stay in that echo chamber bud. They would never tell you something that wasn't true. Trust me