Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist, was an asylum seeker who played by all the rules. He entered the US at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego in August 2024 after registering with the CBP One app. He passed a "credible fear" screening, based on the threat of persecution in his home country of Venezuela but then, based on the flawed assessment of a disgraced former cop working for the private prison company CoreCivic, Andry was detained and transferred to the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County. Despite CoreCivic's claims that it does not play any role in deportation decisions, it was their employee, Charles Cross, Jr. — a cop previously flagged by Milwaukee prosecutors as unreliable in court based on a history of lying and breaking the law — who decided Andry's tattoos were proof that he was a member of Tren de Aragua, a gang that, according to experts, doesn't even use tattoos as proof of membership.
Andry was waiting for an asylum hearing when, without his lawyer being informed, he was transferred first to Texas and then flown in March 2025 to El Salvador. Andry's arrival at the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador was documented by a TIME Magazine photographer who later described to 60 Minutes how the then-31-year-old cried out for his mother while his head was being shaved by prison guards. Since Andry was deported without due process and imprisoned in El Salvador more than 100 days ago, none of his lawyers, family members or friends have been allowed to contact him.
A child with a love of costumes, parades, and theater
From a young age, Andry Romero was a regular participant in the Three Kings Festival in his home town of Capacho, Venezuela.
"We are part of the artistic, cultural and religious heritage of the municipality, this state in Venezuela," his best friend Reina Cardenas told Democracy Now's Amy Goodman this week. The festival "has a long history, and Andry has participated as an actor since he was 7 years old. He has participated as an actor, stylist, makeup artist, and costume designer."
"He did my makeup," said Cardenas. "He was my confidante, and I was his confidante. We had a very close relationship. More than a friendship. Like siblings."
As others in his hometown have done for more than 100 years, writes to The Guardian, Andry "tattooed two crowns on his wrists to memorialize those carnival-like Epiphany commemorations and his Catholic roots."
A makeup artist with a dream of opening a salon
In August 2024, Andry arrived in America with no criminal record and no known gang associations. He dreamt of a career in cosmetics and hoped that one day he could open his own beauty salon.
The only reason he was detained and ultimately sent to El Salvador's gulag at US taxpayer expense was "just benign tattoos," his lawyer, Margaret Cargioli of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, told Democracy Now. "Tattoos that many people have such as a crown that says 'Mom' or 'Dad.' They accused him of being part of Tren de Aragua. They presented no other records, no criminal records, no arrest records, just photos that they assume are connected to Tren de Aragua."
Andry's friend Reina Cardenas said: "Andry and I were in touch when he was in detention in the United States. He basically never entered the US. He was detained from the moment he showed up for his asylum appointment. That’s when this process began. One day, he called me and said, 'Reina, they’re linking me to Tren de Aragua. I need you to get me photos, all the documentation from the Three Wise Men because of the crowns.' I sent these documents and evidence so that he could defend himself, something US authorities never gave him the right to do."
America, a country where criminals roam free
During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to deport "hard, tough, vicious criminals" who were roaming freely in our country.
As President, Trump and his lackeys have acted in ways that are hard, tough, vicious — and criminal.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify deporting Venezuelans without due process, giving himself wartime powers in a time of peace. This overreach is, on its face, unlawful, and has been deemed so by multiple judges. It's so criminal that even the MAGA Supreme Court has tried to establish some roadblocks.
Meanwhile, masked ICE officers are grabbing non-criminals and, increasingly, innocent US citizens, off the streets to meet the targets being set by Stephen "Baby Goebbels" Miller.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi "Deportation Barbie" Noem doesn't simply endorse ICE's Gestapo-like tactics, she often comes along for the ride.
The idea that the US now allows masked thugs to grab people off the street and throw them into unmarked vehicles has also, unsurprisingly, led to reports that many hard, tough, vicious, criminals are roaming the country and terrorizing people by impersonating ICE agents.
Some tattoos show love, others express hate
With no evidence that Andry Romero ever did anything wrong, its seems his only mistake was loving his mom and dad so much he got tattoos to celebrate them.
Andry's tattoos were the only reason he was held ahead in custody of his asylum hearing, even though they were less indicative of anything fearful than, say, the white nationalist tattoos that once prevented "insider threat" Pete Hegseth being deployed to guard President Biden's 2021 inauguration.
As Poynter has reported, Hegseth's "Jerusalem cross and ‘Deus Vult’ tattoos are rooted in the Crusades and have modern-day ties to far-right and white supremacist groups."
Andrys Romero's tattoos, meanwhile, indicate only to his ties to his hometown's Three Kings Festival and the parents he loves.
"His crying out for his mother really, really touched me"
Team Trump shipped 238 migrants to CECOT in El Salvador in March 2025 — defying a court order and a federal judge's instructions to turn the flight back.
As 60 Minutes reported in April, 75% of those sent to El Salvador had no criminal record. Libertarian think-tank the Cato Institute reported in May that, of 90 men sent to CECOT whose method of border crossing was known, 50 had entered the US legally.
TIME Magazine photographer Philip Holsinger, who documented the transportation of the alleged "terrorists," told CBS News that one man who caught his attention was shouting "I'm innocent" and "I'm gay."
That man was Andry Romero.
"He was being slapped every time he would speak up… he started praying and calling out, literally crying for his mother," Holsinger told 60 Minutes Overtime. "His crying out for his mother really, really touched me."
Andry's mother Alexis Romero told Democracy Now this week: "My message to Andry is that I love him, that I want him to come home, that I want him to be strong. He is a warrior. His dad, his brother and I are eagerly waiting for him. We are doing everything in our power to bring him home."
A disgraced ex-cop checked a box to benefit his employer—and ruined Andry's life
While Andry Romero was still a teenager, years before he made the long journey to the US-Mexico border, Milwaukee cop Charles J. Cross was making a name for himself in Wisconsin, reports USA Today:
In 2007, he received a misdemeanor conviction after kicking in the door of the apartment he shared with his girlfriend and threatening to kill himself with his service revolver.... That incident landed him on the Brady List, which gives defense attorneys a chance to contest an officer's credibility if they're called to testify.
In 2012, Cross was arrested again after driving his car into the side of a house, court records show. His blood alcohol level was more than double the legal limit for driving.... After an internal investigation, Cross was fired from the force in October 2012. He appealed and later resigned.
Four months later, he was hired at CoreCivic.
According to Federal Court Records, just one item — tattoos — on a Security Threat Group questionnaire formed the basis of Andry's months-long US detention and eventual deportation.
According to CoreCivic's website:
"We do not enforce immigration laws or arrest anyone who may be in violation of immigration laws. We do not know the circumstances of people when they are placed in a facility or have any say whatsoever in their deportation or release."
Despite that denial, it was Charles J. Cross who typed his name over the title “INVESTIGATOR” on the form.
Everything that led to Andry Romero's ongoing ordeal began because a CoreCivic employee with a checkered past made the non-credible, but profit-maximizing decision that condemned Andry — who had legally entered the United States — to spend months in an ICE facility (conveniently) operated by his employer before CoreCivic delivered him on a plate to Team Trump which — in its typical "screw up first, take no responsibility later" fashion — then committed the worst crime of all: illegally flying Andry to a supermax prison in El Salvador.
Kafka meets Catch-22
As James Duke Mason wrote on Substack on May 2, Andry Romero has faced a "Kafkaesque ordeal":
Labeled a security risk because of his tattoos - cultural symbols, not gang affiliations, his family insists - Andry was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and, on March 15, 2025, deported to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a mega-prison designed for gang members, where inmates are stripped of contact, sunlight, and basic human dignity.
On May 27, a San Diego judge granted the DHS's motion to dismiss Andry Romero's asylum case based on the Catch-22 reasoning that he was unable to attend his asylum hearing because the government from which he sought asylum had illegally disappeared him to maximum security prison in a foreign country and wouldn't bring him back.
That decision is being appealed.
Hundreds rallied for Andry Romero at the Supreme Court on June 7.
Andry remains a plaintiff in the ACLU's and Democracy Forward's ongoing J.G.G. v. Trump case.
But for now, based on one item on a form filled out by a disgraced former cop working for a company that claims it has no role in deportation decisions, the US government, based on no credible evidence whatsoever, is paying El Salvador to detain Andry Romero in a prison designed specifically to break the spirits of the world’s most dangerous and violent offenders.
Andry Romero arrived in America with a legitimate fear of persecution.
Thanks to Trump and his underlings, that fear has become an excruciating, seemingly unending reality.
Help bring justice to Andry's case at: https://www.freeandry.org/
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Further reading: From April 2025: "Heinous Crimes":
Heinous Crimes
They sent an innocent teenager to rot in El Salvador
Richard Hine
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