Outrage Continues Over Gay Venezuelan's Arrest, Deportation for Dubious 'Gang Membership' Claims

Accounts of masked plainclothes ICE agents snatching people off the street, shoving them into unmarked vans, and consigning them to a notorious foreign prison in El Salvador proliferate – but the story of gay hairdresser and asylum seeker Andry José Hernández Romero has staying power.

The young stylist has remained in the headlines, been the subject of podcasts, and been cited as an example of government abuse ever since his story first came to light last month. Hernández Romero was arrested when he tried to keep an asylum appointment, detained for six months, and then summarily deported under Donald Trump's program of sending men to El Salvador's CECOT megaprison.

The main (if not sole) reason for Hernández Romero's ejection from the U.S. seems to be his tattoos. Linked to a Christian tradition in his home town, the ink he sported spoke to his religious devotion – but immigration agents claimed they were proof that Hernández Romero was part of a vicious Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua. Seeking no real evidence, and providing Hernández Romero with no due process, they delivered him to the prison, and no one, including his family, has heard from him since.

UK newspaper the Guardian reported that from childhood Hernández Romero "was enthralled by the annual Three Kings Day celebrations for which his Venezuelan home town is famed," and added that he was only seven years old when he "became a Mini King, as members of the town's youth drama group Los Mini Reyes were known.

"Later in life, he tattooed two crowns on his wrists to memorialize those carnival-like Epiphany commemorations and his Catholic roots."

Those markings of devotion derailed his life. The Guardian reported that, according to newly released documents, "an agent at California's Otay Mesa detention center claimed" that Hernández Romero had "tattoos 'crowns' that are consistent with those of a Tren de Aragua member" – a judgment that "sealed the fate of the young Venezuelan stylist, who friends, family and lawyers say has never committed a crime."

The newspaper account detailed that Hernández Romero, "a 31-year-old makeup artist, hairdresser and theatre lover," was placed under arrest "after he crossed the southern border last August to attend a prearranged asylum appointment in San Diego."

The young man, "who is gay, told agents he was fleeing persecution stemming from his sexual orientation and political views. Just weeks earlier, Venezuela's authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, had unleashed a ferocious crackdown after being accused of stealing the presidential election to extend his 12-year rule."

"On 15 March, after more than six months in custody in the US, Hernández Romero was one of scores of Venezuelans flown from Texas to a maximum security prison in El Salvador as part of Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign," the Guardian narrated. "To the horror of their relatives, some detainees were paraded before the cameras and filmed being manhandled by guards and having their heads shaved before being bundled into cells."

Nightmare stories like this are increasingly common, among them the heartrending case of Abrego Garcia, a young father who immigration officials admitted to "mistakenly" deporting and who now, according to those same officials, cannot be retrieved and returned to his family in the United States.

It's not just tattooed "men of military age" being swept up. Jasmine Mooney, a Canadian actor and business consultant, was arrested and detained for two weeks when she crossed into the U.S. to apply for a TN visa – a legal document available to Mexican and Canadian citizens for certain kinds of employment in the U.S. that Mooney had been granted in the past without difficulty. Mooney was detained for two weeks and has written a harrowing account of her time in custody despite – as CBS News reported – having "her visa paperwork and a job offer from a company in the U.S." with her at the time she was placed under arrest.

But Hernández Romero's plight resonates far and wide, "with people packing Capacho's picturesque 19th-century church, San Pedro de la Independencia, to demand his freedom," the Guardian documented.

"We're talking about someone who has been part of Capacho's Three Kings Day celebrations for 23 years," the president of Capacho's Three Kings Day foundation, Miguel Chacón, told the newspaper. "That's why I'm doing everything I can to get this young man released. He is completely innocent."

Voices in the U.S. are also speaking out – including right-wing podcast Joe Rogan, the Guardian noted. Rogan took to the airwaves to declaim Hernández Romero's fate as "horrific" and declare that, while criminal aliens ought to be removed, "let's not [let] innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs."

Questioned Rogan: "How long before that guy can get out? Can we figure out how to get them out? Is there any plan in place to alert the authorities that they've made a horrible mistake and correct it?"

Good questions all – and the same questions that Hernández Romero's family, his supporters, and his immigration lawyer, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center's Melissa Shepard, would also like to have answered.

Answers do not seem to be forthcoming from the Trump Administration, nor from ICE. If anything, the Trump government has doubled down on the program and its flawed process of evaluating those who become ensnared in its net, the Guardian noted.

Meanwhile, Shepard, too, has stood her ground, declaring that the U.S. government has "disappeared" Hernández Romero.

"I know the government tries to use the language that he was 'removed,'" Shepard told the Guardian. But, she said, "he has absolutely been disappeared."