After 125 days in silence, detained inside an El Salvador concrete fortress built to disappear people, Andry Hernández Romero is finally home in Venezuela, alleging he was tortured, sexually abused, and denied food while detained under a Trump administration deportation order that erased him from society.
Hernández Romero was one of more than 250 Venezuelan men expelled from the United States and sent to confinement at CECOT, a dystopian prison described as a modern-day gulag, in El Salvador under the revived Alien Enemies Act. President Donald Trump used the wartime-era law to deport people without hearings or asylum screenings. For more than four months, advocates have been calling attention to the case and demanding freedom for the gay makeup artist.
Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter.
“It was an encounter with torture and death,” Hernández Romero, 32, told journalists at his family home in Capacho on Wednesday, describing how he and others were beaten, shot with rubber projectiles, and confined in dark cells, before they were suddenly freed on Friday. “Many of our fellows have wounds from the nightsticks; they have fractured ribs, fractured fingers and toes, marks from the handcuffs,” he said, according to Reuters. “Others have marks on their chests, on their face ... from the projectiles.”
Video on social media showed a tearful reunion as he embraced friends and family who had come out to see him.
Related: Gay asylum seeker Andry Hernández Romero remains in danger, advocates warn
Though he entered the United States legally at the San Diego border, appeared for an appointment the U.S. government gave him, and passed an initial credible fear interview, federal agents cited his tattoos—crowns reading “mom” and “dad”—as alleged proof of membership in the Tren de Aragua gang, something his lawyers continue to deny. He had no criminal record.
Venezuelan stylist Andry Hernandez Romero greets family members after returning home in Capacho village, Tachira State, Venezuela, July 2025JOHNNY PARRA/AFP via Getty Images
In a televised interview aired on Venezuelan state media Monday, Hernández Romero alleged sexual abuse by guards. “In my particular case, I was sexually abused by the same Salvadoran authorities who guarded us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” he said in Spanish. He added, “We believed we would never see our families again."
Hernández Romero elaborated on the treatment in a video interview produced by the Nicolás Maduro-aligned program Con Maduro +. “I poured some water on myself, and they caught me,” Hernández Romero said. “They took me to solitary confinement and abused me. I was forced to perform oral sex on an officer. Three officers grabbed the batons and passed them over my private parts. And for me, that was just too devastating. It was my integrity as a human being, as a person of the [LGBTQ+] community, that [brought me to my lowest point.]"
The Venezuelan attorney general has said his office will investigate Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele over the reported torture of Venezuelan nationals, Reuters reports. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security dismissed the abuse claims Tuesday, calling the deported men “criminal, illegal gang members,” according to the news agency.
- YouTube youtu.be
Hernández Romero fled Venezuela in late 2024 to seek asylum in the U.S. because he feared persecution for his sexual orientation and because of his opposition to the country’s authoritarian government. He was detained and later, under the Trump administration, marked for deportation without due process.
Related: Gay asylum-seeker’s lawyer worries for the makeup artist’s safety in Salvadoran ‘hellhole’ prison
Speaking to San Diego ABC affiliate KGTV, Melissa Shepherd, an attorney with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said, “While we’re happy that he’s no longer in the torture prison, we are worried for his future.” Shepherd, who represents Hernández Romero and other deported men, added, “They were physically, verbally, and psychologically tortured.”
Lindsay Toczylowski, ImmDef’s cofounder and CEO, told The Advocate in a separate interview Monday that Hernández Romero’s case illustrated “a really dark foreshadowing of where we’re going as a country if this is allowed to stand.”
“These are people who were sent with no due process to be tortured, only to then be used as political pawns in a prisoner release that none of us were privy to before it happened, that none of them consented to being a part of,” she said.
Related: Kristi Noem won’t say if gay asylum-seeker deported to El Salvador’s ‘hellhole’ prison is still alive
Toczylowski said Hernández Romero remains in danger in Venezuela, the very country from which he fled persecution. Her team is exploring third-country relocation, but options may be limited by his lack of freedom of movement under the Maduro regime.
Still, Hernández Romero said he was moved to learn that people had rallied in support of him during his terrible ordeal. “It fills me with so much peace, so much comfort, so much tranquility that I was never alone, from day one,” he told Reuters. “There were many people who worried for me.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional reporting.
Charlie Kirk DID say stoning gay people was the 'perfect law' — and these other heinous quotes