OWINGS MILLS, Md. -= It looks like Dale Earnhardt Jr. has waved the red flag in a short-lived trademark dispute with Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson.

The NASCAR legend announced Friday on social media that he has secured the right to use a stylized version of No. 8 and will abandon the original No. 8 logo used by Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports. This decision came two days after Jackson filed an opposition claim with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to stop Earnhardt from putting that JR Motorsports version of No. 8 on merchandising.

“We are looking forward to the remainder of an already successful season,” Earnhardt wrote on social media.

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— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) April 4, 2025

Jackson, who has worn No. 8 since his college days at Louisville, previously registered the trademark “ERA 8 by Lamar Jackson.” His filing had argued Earnhardt’s attempt to trademark that particular version of No. 8 would create confusion among consumers.

The trademark review for a challenge can take more than a year. If the U.S. Patent and Trademark appeal board would have denied Earnhardt, Jackson could have sued him if Earnhardt had used it for merchandising.

This isn’t the first time that Jackson has tried to stop another athlete from filing a trademark on this number. In July, Jackson challenged Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman’s attempt to use “EIGHT” on apparel and bags.

When asked about this dispute last summer, Jackson said, “We’re going to keep this about football. That’s outside noise. We’re sticking with [talking about training] camp, football, and that’s it.”

Until five weeks ago, Arturo Suarez was a professional singer, performing in the United States as he waited for his asylum claim to be processed.

Originally from Venezuela, he had entered the US through proper, legal channels.

But he is now imprisoned in a notorious jail in El Salvador, sent there by the Trump administration, despite seemingly never having faced trial or committed any crime. The White House claims he is a gang member but has not provided evidence to support this allegation.

His brother, Nelson Suarez, told Sky News he believes his brother’s only “crime” is being Venezuelan and having tattoos.

“He is not a gang member,” Nelson says, adamantly, “I’ve come to the conclusion that it has to be because of the tattoos. If you don’t have a criminal record, you haven’t committed any crime in the United States, what other reason could there be? Because you’re Venezuelan?”

Arturo, 34, was recording a music video inside a house in March when he was arrested by immigration agents.

He was first taken to a deportation centre in El Paso, Texas, and then, it appears, put on to a military flight to El Salvador.

His family have not heard from him since. Lawyers and immigrant rights groups have been unable to make contact with any of the more than 200 Venezuelan men sent to the CECOT prison, which holds members of the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangs.

Tattoo clue to Arturo Suarez’s whereabouts

Nelson learned his brother is – most likely – in CECOT only because of a photograph he spotted on a news website of a group of inmates, with their hands and feet cuffed, heads shaved and bodies shackled together.

“You can see the hummingbird tattoo on his neck,” Nelson says, pointing to the picture. He says Arturo wanted a hummingbird in memory of their late mother. Arturo has 33 tattoos in total, including a piano, poems and verses from the Bible.

It could be that one, or more, of those tattoos landed him at the centre of President Trump’s anti-immigration showpiece. Nelson shows me documents which indicate that Arturo did not have a criminal record in Venezuela, Chile, Colombia or the United States, the four countries he has lived in.

Sky News contacted the White House, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for a response to Arturo’s case but have not heard back.

In March, Donald Trump signed the Alien Enemies Act, a law from 1798 which has been invoked just three times before, in wartime.

It allows the president to detain and deport immigrants living legally in the US if they are from countries deemed “enemies” of the government. In this instance, Mr Trump claimed the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had “infiltrated the United States” and was “conducting irregular warfare”.

Gang symbol tattoos

Immigration officials have centred on certain tattoos being gang symbols. Immigration officers were provided with a document called the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide”, according to a court filing from the American Civil Liberties Union. The document provides a point-based system to determine if an immigrant in custody “may be validated” as a gang member.

Migrants who score six points and higher may be designated as members of the Tren de Aragua gang, according to the document. Tattoos which fall under a “symbolism” category score four points and social media posts “displaying” gang symbols are two points. Tattoos considered suspicious, according to the document, include crowns, stars and the Michael Jordan Jumpman logo.

Jerce Reyes Barrios’s story

Another of the men sent to CECOT prison is 36-year-old Jerce Reyes Barrios, who fled Venezuela last year after marching in anti-government protests. He is a former footballer and football coach.

His lawyer, Linette Tobin, told Sky News that Reyes Barrios entered the US legally after waiting in Mexico for four months for an immigration appointment and then presenting himself at the border.

She says he was detained in a maximum security prison in the US while awaiting his asylum appointment. But before that appointment happened, he was flown to the El Salvador prison.

Ms Tobin says the DHS deported Reyes Barrios because they designated him a Tren De Aragua gang member based on two pieces of evidence.

The first, she says, is a tattoo of the Real Madrid football team logo surrounded by rosary beads. She has since obtained a declaration from the tattoo artist stating that Reyes Barrios just wanted an image which depicted his favourite team.

The second piece of evidence, she says, is a photograph, which she shows me, of Reyes Barrios in a hot tub with friends when he was a college student 13 years ago.

He is making a gesture which could be interpreted as “rock and roll”, but which she says has been interpreted as a gang symbol.

Distraught family in despair

Reyes Barrios has no criminal record in his home country. “I’ve never known anything like this,” Ms Tobin says.

“My client was deported to a third country and we have no way of getting in touch with him. His family are distraught and in despair, they cry a lot, not knowing what is going on with him. We want him returned to the United States to have a hearing and due process.”

Ms Tobin says she and other lawyers representing men sent to the El Salvador prison are trying to establish a UN working group on enforced disappearances to do a wellness check on them because the prison is completely “incommunicado”.

Sky News contacted the DHS for comment about Reyes Barrios’s case but did not receive a response. The DHS previously issued a statement declaring that “DHS intelligence assessments go well beyond just gang-affiliated tattoos. This man’s own social media indicates he is a member of Tren de Aragua”.

Reyes Barrios has an immigration hearing scheduled for 17 April, Ms Tobin says, which the Trump administration is trying to dismiss on the grounds that he is not in the US anymore.

In the meantime, children he used to coach football for in his hometown of Machiques in Venezuela have been holding a prayer vigil for him and calling for his release.

The secretary of the DHS, Kristi Noem, visited CECOT last month and posed for photos standing in front of inmates behind bars.

“Do not come to our country illegally,” she said, “you will be removed, and you will be prosecuted.” Donald Trump had promised during his election campaign to clamp down on immigration, railing against undocumented immigrants and claiming immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

I ask Arturo Suarez’s brother, Nelson, how he felt watching Ms Noem posing in the prison, knowing that his brother might be close by.

“I feel bad,” he says, “I feel horrible, because in those images we only see criminals. With my brother, I feel it is more a political issue. They needed numbers, they said, these are the numbers, and now, let’s throw them to the lions.”

Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s story

The Trump administration has admitted that at least one man sent to the El Salvador jail was sent by “administrative error”. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was living in Maryland, was sent to CECOT despite a judge’s earlier ruling in 2019 that granted him legal protection to stay in the US.

The White House has alleged Garcia is an MS-13 gang member, but his lawyers argued there is no evidence to prove this.

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A federal judge has ordered Garcia must be returned to the US by Monday 7 April. In a post on X, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller referred to the judge as a “Marxist”, who “now thinks she’s president of El Salvador”.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “We suggest the judge contact President Bukele because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador.”

DARLINGTON, S.C. — Denny Hamlin did his job so his pit crew could do its most stellar stop at the perfect time.

Hamlin came into the pits after a final caution in third place and told himself to hit every mark, then let his guys take over.

And that’s what the Joe Gibbs Racing group did, pulling off a perfect winning moment that sent Hamlin out with the lead. He took over on the final restart and held off William Byron to win the Goodyear 400 on Sunday.

It was Hamlin’s 56th career NASCAR win, his fifth at Darlington Raceway and his second straight this season

“When you think about 56 wins, that’s a huge deal,” said Gibbs, Hamlin’s longtime car owner.

Hamlin said he hung on throughout as Byron and others looked like they might pull out victory. Instead, Hamlin waited out his time and then pounced as he broke away during the green-white-checkered finish.

“I can still do it, I can do it at a high level and look forward to winning a lot of races this year,” Hamlin said.

Hamlin won for a second straight week after his success at Martinsville.

Hamlin chose the outside lane for a final restart and shot out to the lead and pulled away from series points leader Byron and NASCAR wins leader Christopher Bell.

Hamlin looked like he’d have a strong finish, but not a winning one as Ryan Blaney passed Tyler Reddick for the lead with three laps left. But moments later, Kyle Larson spun out forcing a final caution and the extra laps.

It was then time for Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing pit crew to shine as it got him out quickly and in the lead.

Byron, who led the first 243 laps, was second with Hamlin’s JGR teammate Bell in third.

“There are two people I really love right now, my pit crew and Kyle Larson,” Hamlin said to a round of boos from those in the stands.

Reddick was fourth and Blaney was fifth. The rest of the top 10 finishers were Chris Buescher, Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott, Ty Gibbs and Kyle Busch.

Hamlin credited the past two victories to his pit crew.

“The pit crew just did an amazing job,” he said. “They won it last week, they won it this week. It’s all about them.”

Blaney had thought he was clear to his first-ever Darlington victory after getting by Reddick late. When he saw the caution flag for Larson’s spin, he said he thought, “Oh, no! I thought we had the race won.”

So did Byron, who sought was to become the first NASCAR driver in nearly 25 years to lead every lap on the way to victory. He got shuffled down the standings during the last round of green-flag pit stops and could not recover.

“It was looking like it was going to be a perfect race and we were going to lead every lap,” he said.

But once “we lost control, it was too late to get back up there,” Byron said.

Bad day

Kyle Larson, who won the Southern 500 here in 2023, had high hopes for a second Darlington win. But he slid into the inside wall coming off the second turn on lap three and went right to garage where his team worked the next couple of hours to get him back on track. Larson returned on lap 164 after falling 161 laps off the pace. Larson finished next to last in 37th.

Biffle’s ride

Greg Biffle, the last NASCAR driver to win consecutive Cup Series victories at Darlington in 2006 and 2007, drove the pace car for the Goodyear 400 on Sunday. Biffle has had an eventful few months, flying rescue missions with his helicopter into areas of the Southeast affected by devastating Hurricane Helene in September.

Biffle was planning a weeklong trip to the Bahamas when his phone started going off about people stranded in parts of Western North Carolina.

“I went to the hangar and the power was out,” Biffle said. “We got the hangar down open with the tug and got the helicopter out. Once I got in the air, I realized what had taken place.”

Biffle then flew the next 11 days from “sunup to sundown.”

“It was incredible,” Biffle said. “It was pretty tough going for the first week.”

Biffle won the Myers Brothers Humanitarian Award for his work.

Up next

The series goes to Bristol on April 13 before taking its traditional Easter break.