Andry Jose Hernandez Romero fled Venezuela for the US to escape persecution for his homosexuality and his political views. When he arrived in 2024, the US was a good place to seek political and personal freedom. That is no longer the case.
In March, based on unsubstantiated allegations that Andry had gang tattoos, the 32-year-old makeup artist was illegally deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison. Since then – nearly three months – he and more than 250 others, most without any criminal history, have been held incommunicado, unable to speak to lawyers or family.
The man who claimed Andry’s tattoos were gang related is a former police officer who was fired for driving his car into a house while drunk, and who stands accused of falsifying overtime records. Yet despite his serious credibility issues, this man, as a government contractor, was given the authority to deport Andry.
Many of those detained or deported were in the US legally, but were still denied due process. Some were politically active university students. One was a two-year-old US citizen. One had been here legally since she was eight months old, but was deported to a country she’d never seen, whose language she doesn’t speak.
This ICE activity is not to protect us from “dangerous illegals.” Instead, detention and deportation are being used to intimidate, create chaos, and add to the dismay that keep us from responding effectively. But we CAN respond.
Dozens of excellent organizations are fighting hard in court against this administration’s callous cruelty and disregard for the law. Find, follow, and support them. Andry is just one of hundreds who desperately need our help. (He is represented by the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.)
What does it say about us as a country, and as individuals, if we do not fight the damage being done to countless individuals by the illegal and unconstitutional activities of this administration? Have we learned nothing from the example of 1930s Germany?
We can all help. And it’s in our own best interests to do so – what happens to these people today could happen to us tomorrow.
As a current popular meme says, “We’re about 3 lines into Pastor Niemöller’s ‘First They Came For' ... and it’s not a very long poem.”
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Submitted by Ellen Gordon of Midway, Kentucky
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