A Tattoo Called “Prophet”

By Dr. Roderick Ferguson, ICN Contributing Public Intellectual 

I was driving sometime in late March of 2025 when I heard the news. ICE was racially profiling Venezuelan men with tattoos and deporting them to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. Because of the tattoos the men were accused of being gang members and enemies of the U.S. government. One professional soccer player was deported because he had a tattoo with a crown sitting atop a soccer ball that was wrapped in a rosary. The word “Dios”—Spanish for “God”—was written underneath. That tattoo was homage to his favorite soccer team. Another abductee was removed because he sported tattoos on each of his forearms. One read “Mom,” and the other read “Dad.” Having never wanted a tattoo in my life, I made up my mind to get one by the end of the year. 

Around that time, I began reading Pope Francis’s book A Stranger and You Welcomed Me: A Call to Mercy and Solidarity with Immigrants and Refugees. In one of the book’s sermons, the late pontiff defined what it means to “suffer with” people and to have compassion for them. It involves “learning about the events that force people to leave their homelands, and, where necessary, to give voice to those who cannot manage to make their cry of distress and oppression heard.” That’s when the tattoo’s image came to me.

It’s a black and white linocut called “Prophet,” first made in 1969 by the pioneering artist and civil rights activist Samella Lewis. Lewis was the first Black woman to receive a Ph.D. in art history in 1951. She was also the founder of the first Black arts journal—Black Arts Quarterly—and the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles. 

Her piece is comprised of a rectangular image of a bearded man with piercing eyes. Some say he looks like Jesus. Others may say, no, he resembles Jeremiah or one of the prophets. I can’t say who she had in mind, but I know one thing. This work spoke to me about our collective need to achieve prophetic voice in this moment of peril.

By mid-March of 2025, the Trump administration had deported 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador. “Rapists,” “savages,” “monsters,” and the “worst of the worst” is what the President and his aides said about them. By May of that year, Homeland Security’s own records revealed that the administration knew that the vast majority had no criminal records in the U.S. but sent them to CECOT prison, nonetheless. 

During that period, the President’s administration also went after international students who attended pro-Palestinian demonstrations or wrote publicly in support of Palestinian rights. Yunseo Chung, Mahmoud Khalil, Leqaa Kordia, Mohsen Mahdawi, Rumeysa Ozturk, Ranjani Srinivasan, Badar Khan Suri, and Momodou Taal were labeled terrorist supporters. Accordingly, Homeland Security redirected its so-called “Tiger Team”—which typically handles human trafficking and national security crimes—to investigate the writings and whereabouts of young people. An official who supervised the effort admitted that the team—according to the New York Times—“rushed a review of more than 5,000 students linked to pro-Palestinian demonstrations.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote then, “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters so they can be deported.” During the week of January 12^th of this year, Judge William G. Young, an appointee of Ronald Reagan, released the documents that the Tiger Team compiled. In addition to showing that the students were targeted because of their protests and writings, the dossiers also reveal that government officials knew the young people’s actions were likely protected by the Constitution. Put simply, the 
Trump administration knew it was in the wrong when it hounded and arrested the students but chased and apprehended them anyway. 

On our tv’s, computers, tablets, and phones, we can watch ICE agents terrorize people across the country, approaching everyone in sight as threats to national security. As the killings of Keith Porter, Jr.—a Black father in Los Angeles, Renee Good—a poet and mother in Minneapolis, and Alex Pretti—an ICU nurse—attest, the Trump administration and ICE are recategorizing citizens as terrorists. As a result, they are producing the conditions in which there will be no such thing as a citizen or a person whose life and dignity must be preserved before the law. 

The writer George Orwell famously said, “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” Calling innocent people “rapists,” “terrorists,” and “murderers” from the perch of high office is a way of normalizing democracy’s end, and none of us should stand for it. 

Samella Lewis didn’t choose any specific name for her piece—not “Abraham,” “Noah,” or “Moses.” She entitled it “Prophet” according to its function instead. Discussing the role of the prophet, Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez—the father of liberation theology—said prophets interpret “historical events with the intention of revealing and proclaiming their profound meaning.” Describing the prophets’ disposition, he went on to say, “They will be engaged where nations, social classes, and peoples struggle to free themselves from domination by other nations, classes, and peoples.” We mostly think of prophets as individuals, but prophets can come in the form of social groups as well, like the people in the Twin Cities who are literally picking what’s left of democracy up from the ground. 

My forearm now has the picture of a prophet on it, and I have learned that tattoos are ways of repositioning the self, turning it towards peoples, histories, and struggles.  The students who were protesting and writing for the good of others, the brother who went outside to celebrate the new year, the poet-mother who was there to support her neighbors, the nurse who tried to help someone that the police had thrown to the ground, the immigrants in search of a new beginning—the tattoo is a reminder to be on their side. As the Anishinaabe in Minnesota and other parts say, “They are all our relatives.”