You Need To Know About Andry Hernández Romero

I Can't Stop Thinking About Him

Apr 27, 2025

WORST NIGHTMARE :: Anyone paying attention to the cornucopia of horrifying news coming out of the United States has heard the name Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He’s the admitted mistake the hot glue gun mess that is the Trump administration made when they abducted him - along with hundreds of others with no criminal records.

They are accused of being gang member because of “identifying” tattoos (an autism symbol was the offending ink job on one victim) that purportedly prove them to belong to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Trump “deported” Abrego Garcia and their other abductees in the night - and against a judge’s orders - to an notorious gulag in El Salvador. While Trump calls his deplorable actions deportations, they aren’t. Deportations return deportees back to their country of origin. What Trump is doing is human trafficking to a torture prison.

The country’s Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) is a hellhole mega-prison no one ever leaves. Visitors are not allowed, light are on 24 hours a day, and no one gets to go outdoors. Inmates are piled atop one another in cells designed to hold 65-70 prisoners each.

Hundreds of men are victims of Trump’s monstrous policy, yet it’s Abrego Garcia whose name has become synonymous with this real life horror movie. Free Kilmar protests back in the US have been on-going. There is nightly national news coverage about his story. Kilmar Abrego Garcia has become the face of Trump’s evil, inhumane decision to kidnap and imprison hundreds of likely innocent people who have done nothing wrong. “Bring him back!” American people demand.

While Congress was in El Salvador, they sought proof of life for Andry Henández Romero.
They didn’t get any.

This past week, despite both Trump and El Salvador’s dictator President Nayebe Bukele recently saying there’s nothing that can be done, that Abrego Garcia and the others are doomed to be locked in CECOT forever, Democratic members of Congress went to El Salvador, and one - his representative from Maryland - even got to meet with Abrego Garcia, who sent a message of love back to the States to his worried-sick wife.

So lots is being said and done about Abrego Garcia. Thank god.

But what’s being done about Andry Hernández Romero?

Hernández Romero is a gay man. A makeup artist. Loves theatre. Images of him depict him as slight; in one he is flamboyant. He poses holding makeup brushes, or with rainbow balloons, or flowers. His sister calls him gentle. He is as beautifully gay as a garden party in June.

The tattoos that are said to link him to Tren de Aragua are two crowns, one on each wrist, with “mother” and “father” written on them. Hernández Romero was always enthralled, since he was a little boy, by the Three Kings Day annual celebration for which his Venezuelan home town is famous; he has done the makeup for all the women participating in past years. The inking of crowns is not uncommon among the townspeople.

Hernández fled Venezuela partly because as a gay man he would face persecution there. The first time he tried to get into the US via Mexico, he was arrested and sent back. Then he took the proper route and made an appointment to claim asylum using a Customs and Border Protection app. At his appointment, his crown tattoos were spotted, and US immigration officers detained him. He was then thrown on the plane load of other abducted Venezuelans bound for CECOT, none of them allowed any of the due process they are entitled to have, according to the US constitution, there to protect individuals from arbitrary deprivation of life, liberty, or property by the government outside the scope of law.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Andry Hernández Romero since I learned of his kidnapping and imprisonment weeks ago. He reminds me of me. He’s said to be sensitive, he cries easily, is empathetic and vulnerable. When he was sent to rot in El Salvador, to live a life of dehumanization, guards shaved his head, as they do with all prisoners.

When his head was shaved, Hernández Romero screamed for his mother.

I wouldn’t last a day in any prison, never mind in the reprehensible CECOT. I can’t stop thinking of Hernández because I can, with great ease, imagine the terror of what being a non-violent, flower loving, peaceful and innocent gay man in one of the world’s most brutal prisons would be like - or does my imagination only scratch the surface of what he has endured? I can also imagine, if I knew for certain I was trapped there for the rest of my life, killing myself, if a homophobic inmate didn’t beat me to it. My friend Stu concurred yesterday, when we discussed our poor Venezuelan brother’s plight, that he also wouldn’t last a second in there. I can’t imagine a gay man who wouldn’t feel the same way.

While Congress was in El Salvador, they sought proof of life for Henández Romero.

They didn’t get any.

His lawyer says no one, including his desperate family, has heard from him since his abduction.

There has been press on Hernández Romero’s terrifying fate, I’m not saying his story hasn’t been covered. But we need Abrego Garcia level efforting on this. We want to see him on the news just as much; we want to see his name in protests; we want to see him set free.

If you’re an American, please use your voice. Hernández Romero isn’t a US citizen, but have mercy on him. His own country isn’t going to help him. Demand that the US Embassy in El Salvador, who promised this week to locate him and report back, keep their promise. Call your congressperson, your senator. Protest. Get Hernández Romero’s name on people’s lips, get him more news coverage. If you’re Canadian, or from any other country, make sure the Americans in your life know about Andry Hernández Romero and hopefully they will apply pressure wherever they can.

At the very least let’s find out if he’s even still alive.

UPDATE MAY 29 :: After his deportation, Hernandez Romero’s lawyers fought to keep his asylum claim open as a way of ensuring he didn’t disappear from the American legal system.

But an immigration judge in San Diego dismissed Hernandez’s asylum claim on Tuesday, May 27th — one of at least 14 such dismissals in recent weeks. That has immigration attorneys concerned that the dismissals are the Trump administration’s latest tactic in evading due process to ensure those kidnapped have no means to return.

Shaun Proulx

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