A suspected Colombian gangster stopped from illegally entering the US had tattoos linking him to a dangerous drug cartel — and sickening photos on his phone of people being tortured, according to authorities.
The unidentified man was arrested while “attempting to enter the country illegally” in El Paso, Texas, on Thursday last week, Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens said Wednesday along with photos of the suspect, showing his cartel-linked tattoos and a bullet necklace.
“Agents searched the subject and found photos of people being tortured on his phone,” Owens said, without elaborating.
“He also had specific tattoos indicative of gang membership,” he said — namely Clan del Golfo, also known as the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest cocaine trafficker.
Photos showed the suspect with “I [heart] God” tattooed on his neck, along with inkings across his body and on his face, including teardrops from his right eye. In one, he flashed a peace sign in apparent defiance of his arrest.
It was not immediately clear what happened to the suspect, who was not otherwise identified.
The troubling arrest is just one of a flood of migrants with criminal backgrounds being stopped at the US border, a Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson told The Post, calling it a “daily occurrence.”
“We apprehend criminal aliens every day on the southwest border,” the rep said.
Last year, more than 35,000 migrants with criminal backgrounds were detained, according to Customs and Border Patrol statistics.
More than 10,000 have also been detained so far in 2024, the statistics show.
The Clan del Golfo, or the Gulf Clan, is the largest cocaine trafficker in the country.
It was formed by members of former right-wing paramilitary groups that demobilized in the early 2000s, and has since taken control of communities, where it administers justice, taxes local businesses and employs children.
Last year, the cartel’s drug lord Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, 51, was sentenced by a New York judge to serve 45 years in federal prison and was ordered to pay $216 million in forfeiture for smuggling tons of cocaine into the United States.
Dubbed “the most dangerous drug trafficker in the world” by Colombian President Ivan Duque, Úsuga David became a leader of the Gulf Clan in 2003 and rose through the ranks to lead the cartel by 2012.
Federal prosecutors said Úsuga David, of Antioquia, Colombia, ran the cartel like a paramilitary force that had control over vast swaths of the Urabá region up until his capture in 2021.
He held onto his power by ruling with an iron fist, ordering the assassinations and torture of rival cartel members, suspected traitors, government cooperators and even the police, the feds said.
After his brother was killed in a police raid in 2012, Úsuga David ordered the towns the group controlled to shut down businesses and keep residents inside, telling his hitmen — called “sicarios” — to kill anyone who disobeyed, according to prosecutors.
Úsuga David, also known as Otoniel, had been on the run for a decade — evading Columbia’s military by corrupting state officials and forming alliances with other combatants — before he was finally captured on Oct. 23, 2021.
But the group has apparently managed to maintain its power since his arrest, with an estimated 9,000 fighters and earning more than $4 billion each year, according to a report published Tuesday by the International Crisis Group.
It has now agreed to accept Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s offer to start peace negotiations.
The president had said he would start peace negotiations with the cartel if it “dares” to stop drug trafficking, stop illegally taxing local businesses and stop profiting off the transit of migrants headed to the United States.
The group responded on Tuesday saying it accepted the president’s invitation.
But it denied being involved in any human smuggling operations.
With Post wires.