Makeup artist Andry Hernandez Romero fled to America to escape persecution. The Trump admin instead disappeared him and hundreds of other contributors to a dictator’s notorious mega-prison
Andry Hernandez Romero hoped he’d found safety after asking for asylum in the United States. Hernandez Romero, an openly gay man and makeup artist who’d found steady work at a Venezuelan television studio, had fled his home country after being harassed by armed vigilantes aligned with the Maduro government. In the U.S., immigration officials determined “that his threats against him were credible, and that he had a real probability of winning an asylum claim,” his attorney told 60 Minutes.
But despite passing his initial interview, Hernandez Romero was kept in detention. Like millions of people all over the world, he has tattoos. His are crowns on each wrist, with the names of his parents underneath. “These crowns, according to the government, were ‘determining factors to conclude reasonable suspicion,’” The New Yorker reported. Despite the fact that he was detained due to this innocuous set of tattoos, he had some hope he could eventually win his freedom. But then Hernandez Romero didn’t show for court.
“Our client, who was in the middle of seeking asylum, just disappeared,” attorney Lindsay Toczylowski continued to 60 Minutes. “One day he was there, and the next day we’re supposed to have court, and he wasn’t brought to court.” Hernandez Romero had been among hundreds of Venezuelan migrants who were rounded up and purged to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, despite the fact that the vast majority of them, 75%, had no apparent criminal record at all, 60 Minutes said in an April 6 segment. In a blockbuster report on April 9, Bloomberg said its investigation showed that 90% of these men have no criminal record.
Toczylowski hadn’t been informed of his disappearance, nor had his family back in Venezuela, with whom he kept in contact via phone. “But Andry did appear in photos taken by Time magazine photographer Philip Holsinger, who was there when the Venezuelans arrived at CECOT,” 60 Minutes reported. “Holsinger told us he heard a young man say: ‘I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a stylist.’ And that he cried for his mother as he was slapped and had his head shaved.”
This mass purging of immigrant contributors and asylum-seekers with no criminal record to a notorious mega-prison – a Trump administration-created practice that is netting El Salvador dictator Nayib Bukele’s government a reported $6 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars – should send a chill down the spines of all Americans who care about their immigrant neighbors and are concerned about the due process rights and freedoms of all individuals here.
One of the most well known abductions carried out by the Trump administration involves Maryland dad Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was sent to the mega-prison even though he had no criminal record and had been granted protected status by a federal judge under Trump’s first administration. Despite the administration ignoring the dad’s due process rights and fully admitting that he was wrongfully shipped thousands of miles away, the administration is actively refusing to bring him back, fighting a federal judge’s order and taking their despicable fight all the way to the Supreme Court. These actions “pose a broader threat to the due process rights and basic liberties and freedoms of everyone in America, noncitizens and citizens alike,” America’s Voice Legal Advisor David Leopold said in his recent Washington Post op-ed, noting that due process is no “mere legal technicality.”
“It mandates that no individual, including noncitizens in the United States, be deprived of life, liberty or property without a fair and just process. It is enshrined in the Constitution as a safeguard against arbitrary executive power,” Leopold wrote. “The Trump administration has used its first few months to target the due process rights of immigrants. If left unchecked, its efforts will threaten the broader rights and liberties of us all.” And, the administration is openly making these threats:
During a White House briefing this week, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt – who has previously stated the administration’s outrageous stance that it believes all undocumented immigrants are “criminals” even if they actually have no record – issued a threat against the freedoms of all Americans by raising the idea of sending U.S. citizens to El Salvador. Leavitt claimed the proposal would involve only so-called “heinous” “criminals” – but what was Andry Hernandez Romero’s crime? What was Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s crime? Trump, meanwhile, “responded positively to the idea,” Truthout reported. “‘I love that,’ Trump said, adding that he’d be ‘honored to give them’ to that country.”
And what would assure U.S. citizens that they won’t be caught up in this mass abduction and purging net too? In past years, U.S. citizens have been wrongly detained and deported by ICE. And while the all nine Justices on the Supreme Court said in the Tuesday ruling lifting the temporary block on the 1798 wartime law that targeted immigrants are entitled to due process to challenge their deportation, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent offered a terrifying warning. “The implication of the government’s position is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.
Trump administration officials are telling us exactly what they want to do – believe them. During a recent press gaggle, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed without any evidence that the men shipped off to El Salvador are violent. When challenged on the fact that the vast majority have no criminal record, she simply walked away. During a forceful House floor speech, Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) said that we were being lied to and it was “optics over evidence” with this administration. And those lies and optics over evidence may cost us all the freedoms we hold dear.
“Andry is not a gang member, he’s not a terrorist, he’s no threat to anyone,” Rep. Balint said during her floor speech. “He is a son, a brother, a makeup artist, a hairdresser. He is a man who fled his country to come to the United States because he feared for his life because he’s gay. We are being lied to. These kinds of cruel tactics are not necessary to keep us safe. This is about taking away due process, intimidating us into silence, and submission. If this administration will do this to Andry, they will do it to anyone. We are all at risk. Protect due process.”
