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Nobody has heard from Andry Romero since he was sent to the CECOT mega prison in El Salvador.
Nobody has heard from the young makeup artist since the Trump administration deported him in March.
As Pride Month comes to a close, the family of Andry José Hernández Romero is speaking up on Democracy Now!, pleading for proof of life as the 31-year-old gay Venezuelan asylum-seeker remains missing more than 100 days after being sent to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison CECOT under a Trump-era order.
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“It’s been 105 days since over 200 men, including Andry, were disappeared from the United States to El Salvador and to CECOT,” said Margaret Cargioli, directing attorney at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, during the broadcast. “Immigration attorneys have not been able to have any contact with Andry, his family has not been able to see him and they have not been able to speak with him directly since they were sent there.”
Hernández Romero entered the U.S. legally in 2024, fleeing anti-LGBTQ+ violence and political persecution.
Related: Hundreds rallying at Supreme Court demand Trump return disappeared gay asylum-seeker Andry Hernández Romero
After passing a credible fear interview, he was deported after showing up for an appointment the U.S. government gave him. The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, previously used to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II. Officials accused him of gang ties based on crown tattoos above the names of his parents, though his attorneys say he has no criminal record.
“He never had due process,” said Reina Cardenas, Hernández Romero’s best friend. “He was detained from the moment he showed up for his asylum appointment.”
Hernández Romero’s situation has struck a nerve with the LGBTQ+ community.
About 300 people rallied at the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month, demanding Hernández Romero’s return. “We believe at this moment that he sits in a torture prison, a gulag in El Salvador,” Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said on the steps of the court at a June 6 protest organized by the Human Rights Campaign with support from The Bulwark and Crooked Media. “We say ‘believe’ because we have not had any proof of life for him since the day he was put on a U.S. government-funded plane, forcibly disappeared.”
Alexis Romero told Democracy Forward! that her son means everything to her, describing him as “a young man who is very introverted, a person who loves to learn, who loves to help other people.” She calls Andry a homebody who has always been “100% supportive of his dad, his brother, and me, his mom.”
Related: Kristi Noem won’t say if gay asylum-seeker deported to El Salvador’s ‘hellhole’ prison is still alive
She recalled their last conversation on March 14, when Andry called around 6:30 p.m. to say he was being moved to another detention center in Texas and would soon be flown to Venezuela. “The plane was carrying all of the other innocent young men,” she said.
But instead of returning home, the plane took him to El Salvador. Alexis found out the following Thursday that her son was imprisoned there, a moment that, as she put it, changed their lives completely.
“We were so happy waiting for him to come home so that all of his trauma would end,” she said. “Instead, everything got worse.”
Gay California U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking member on the powerful House Oversight Committee, has pressed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for answers, but she has refused to confirm whether Hernández Romero is even alive.
