Tattoos, Not Ties: ICE Transfers Another Venezuelan Barber to Guantanamo
Despite having no violent criminal record or gang ties, Daimer Oropeza's family fears they may never hear from him again
Daimer Willians Oropeza, 27, dreamed of becoming a radiologist. As a teenager in Venezuela, he studied radiology until a ruptured hernia forced him to abandon his education—his family couldn’t afford the costly medical treatments. To support himself, he took up a new trade as a barber, a skill that would take him across South America and eventually to the United States.
Oropeza’s migration path is difficult to track due to the number of countries he lived in while working as a barber. Social media posts and interviews with his relatives reveal that he worked in Colombia, then Peru, then Chile, before making his way north to Mexico. There, he waited for five months for a CBP One appointment that never materialized.
Migrant Insider is sponsored by
After growing impatient, Oropeza crossed into the U.S. for the first time in May 2023, turning himself in to border agents. After spending 17 days in detention at the El Paso Processing Center in Texas, he was deported back to Mexico.
Determined to stay in the U.S., he crossed the border again, this time avoiding detection and traveling to California, where he worked as a barber for a year. Then, two cousins approached him with a job opportunity in Texas. As they drove through El Paso, border agents pulled them over. A routine records check led to Oropeza’s detention. He spent the next eight months in the El Paso Processing Center before signing a voluntary deportation order in late December.
Oropeza and his family assumed he would be sent back to Venezuela—or, at worst, to Mexico. But as his detention dragged on and a new administration took office in Washington, rumors spread among detainees in El Paso: some were being deported to third countries.
“Agents told my cousin Daimer he would be deported to El Salvador, even though he repeatedly stated he was from Venezuela,” a family member told Migrant Insider. “His last words to us were, ‘I don’t know what they’re going to do to me or if we’ll ever speak again.’”
On February 5, Oropeza’s family received their last communication from him before ICE transferred him to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. His family learned of Daimer’s transfer after his name appeared on a list of 53 Guantanamo detainees published by The New York Times.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has claimed—without evidence—that the detainees sent to Guantanamo have violent criminal records or gang affiliations. However, Oropeza has no known criminal record in Venezuela or the U.S.
Migrant Insider is sponsored by
What he does have is tattoos: his mother’s name, his daughters’ names and birthdates, a crown, and a flower. DHS has a long history of using tattoos to falsely accuse migrants of gang affiliations, often as a pretext for expedited removal.
“This is pure injustice,” said a family member. “Tattoos are normal among young people in Venezuela. It’s a generational trend, just like anywhere else.”
Meanwhile, Oropeza has vanished into ICE detention, joining more than 150 other Venezuelan migrants with no contact with their families or attorneys. According to ICE’s detainee locator, he was transferred to Miami. However, DHS sources tell Migrant Insider that the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center has yet to be coded into ICE’s system, making it nearly impossible to track detainees sent there.
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said that detainees like Daimer and others who have no criminal background should file a writ of habeas corpus, a court order that requires law enforcement to produce a prisoner and justify the prisoner's detention. Oropeza, like dozens of other detainees at Guantanamo, is not currently represented by a lawyer.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This is a developing story.
Thanks for reading Migrant Insider. Follow our work on X, Bsky, Threads, and Reddit. To inquire about sponsorships, email sponsor@migrantinsider.com. Subscribe below for $5/month or $49/year,, if you haven’t already. Our work is made possible by the generous support of readers like you.