The New Yorker:

The Trump Administration is using an “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” to target supposed members of Tren de Aragua, but many of the items on the list—tattoos, sports jerseys, Jordans—are commonplace in urban style and music.

By Oriana van Praag

On the morning of April 23, 2024, Claudio David Balcane González, a twenty-six-year-old musician from the state of Aragua, in Venezuela, arrived at the Texas border. In the previous three months, he had travelled through nine countries, before securing an appointment with officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security through CBP One, an initiative of the Biden Administration to create a more orderly system for asylum claims. Border Patrol held him at the station until midnight, asking about his background and his many tattoos, which include a rose, a clock, a crown, and two guns. Eventually, he was released with a future immigration-court date. Balcane went to meet a friend in San Antonio and posted a picture with him on Instagram, with the caption “If you can dream of it, you can make it happen.”

Balcane, who performs as Davicito59, began making music at thirteen and spent years busking on buses around Maracay, the capital of Aragua. He started out as a rapper, but his focus has since shifted to dembow, a genre that originated in the Dominican Republic and has become explosively popular among Venezuelans in the U.S. A month after Balcane entered the country, he released a song called “Yo me voy por el Darién,” which describes the perils of crossing the jungle that separates Colombia from Panama—jaguars, soldiers, criminals—and the hopes that kept him going. “We ate rice with vulture meat but held our heads high,” Balcane sings. “We had left home with a mission: to make it big.” He called it “el nuevo himno de los caminantes”—the new hymn of the walkers—and it quickly gained a following on social media. Balcane was soon collaborating with more established musicians, including John Theis, a pioneer of Venezuelan dembow in the U.S. At a concert in Detroit, Theis teased Balcane onstage. “This dude is here signing baseball caps!” he said. “You weren’t signing caps in el Darién.”

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