Throughout the fall and winter, Alexis Romero de Hernandez struggled to accept a dark, dark routine. She lived in a small town in the center of Venezuela called Kapsho, with her husband and the youngest son. The oldest, a thirty -year -old make -up artist named Andre Jose Hernandez Romero, was held in a prison prison in San Diego. Call her every few days, usually later in the afternoon, to reassure her that he was safe. The calls will last for a minute. Alexis had to put money on his contact card to keep it coming. “Mama, relax”, Andrely told her. “I’m fine. They treat us well. What is bad is that we are stuck here.”
In Kabbasho, Andre was a member of a local theater group, and he worked in the annual church procession during the Diver’s Day, which is known, in the Spanish -speaking world, as El DE DE LOS Reyes Magos, or Three Kings Day. He loved drawing, and had a tendency to bring an aesthetic to every corner of his life. When he worked as a hotel receptionist for a period of time, he created a balloon decoration in the hallway; At home, fashion and clothes are designed. He made friends easily, but Alexis said he did not drink or stay late. Andrei told me, “Very modest, very humble and very open.” “He is comfortable with being alone. He cooks me and helps clean. He is a home person.”
In 2023, Andre took a job at a state -run television station in Caracas, the country’s capital. It was an ideal task – it was responsible for preparing for the display marina and guests on the screen, and his family, who have a store that sells glass for mirrors and tables, needed money. But he was gay and suspicious of the country’s authoritarian regime, which made it a target of abuse. Alexis told me that the year he spent in Caracas was “persecution and discrimination. People in high places always distinguish against those who decrease. At night, after work, he often followed at home and harassed him by the armed vigilance that is in line with the government; at times, his boss at the station in front of his co -workers.
When Andre told his parents that he decided to leave Venezuela, in late May 2024, they begged to stay. “At least see how things go with the elections,” Alexis told him, referring to the country’s presidential race in August. “His father spoke to him too. But there was no way to persuade him not to go.” Andre’s decision initially seemed to be the current president, Nicholas Maduro, who seemed to have lost a vote in an overwhelming margin, announced the winner. Andre was one of about seven hundred and sixty thousand Veneers who traveled to the United States during the Biden administration, where he passed a notorious, notorious forest known as Dary Gab, between Colombia and Panama. “He did the trip,” Alexis said. “He wanted to change his life, reach his potential, and help us here.”
The first time Andrei tried to enter the United States, he was arrested and sent to Tabasco, Mexico, where a friend helped him download a government application that allowed migrants to set dates in Ports of Entry. The system, known as CBP One, was an attempt to manage the Biden to create a more organized operation for people to enter the country. Part of the hypothesis was to motivate migrants on the “right path”, although it took months often to open holes. On the morning of August 29, a US official had an interview with Andrei on the borders of the United States of Mexico in San Diego. Andrei was not a criminal record, and the exchange seemed clear.
“Did you claim asylum while you are in Mexico?” The official asked.
He replied, “I didn’t know that I could do that.”
Andrei finally passed by examining the initial asylum. Officials decided that he had shown “reliable fear” of persecution in his mother country. But during the physical examination, they installed the tattoo. It covers a snake that extends from a bouquet of left -handed flowers and a biceps muscle. In each of his wrist is a crown, with the phrase “my mother” and “my father” I ink next to them in the English language. The photos in his file show a thin man, slight of construction, with a young face and dark hair; There are rings under his eyes, standing in front of the government photographer without a shirt.
Andrei Jose Hernandez Romero.The image is a courtyard of Lindsay Tuckslovsky
Andrei denied belonging to any gang. The agent, who asked him about the tattoo, described his “behavior during the interview” as “universal”. A note was added to his file: “When having a review of the detainee Hernandez tattoo, it was found that the detainee Hernandez has a crown on all of his wrist. These crowns, according to the government, were “determining the factors to conclude reasonable suspicion.”
Often, asylum seekers who pass the initial examination are released by a future court history, but Andrei remained in reservation, apparently due to the government’s doubts about tattoos. In December, three months after his detention, Paulina Reyes, a lawyer of the Immigrant Defender Center, met with a legal invitation organization, who agreed to represent him on a supporter basis. Reyes presented the asylum application on behalf of Andre. They spoke regularly, whether personally or on the phone, while waiting for the court to be held on March 13.
About a week before the session, Andrei and a number of other Venezuelans in San Diego were transferred to a facility in South Texas. Reyes, which enforced migration and customs (IceHe neglected to report, and this was found when Andrei called her from Texas. That was the last time the two spoke. During the March 13 session, in San Diego, Reyes believed that he might appear on the video. When he did not, the procedures were postponed until March 17. Reese was not able to talk to him, so she did not realize that, on Friday, March 14th, he managed to make a final phone call to his mother. He told her that he was fine, but the government was about to transfer him again. He had no information about his destination.
When Andrei failed to appear in the second hearing, the immigration judge wanted to know why the government was not available. “He was transferred to El Salvador” Ice The lawyer answered. “We just discovered today.” This surprised the judge, who was there to determine whether Andre should be deported or not. “How can he be removed to El Salvador,” the judge asked, “If there is no order to remove?”
On March 14: Donald Trump has signed an advertisement that his administration will start using the presidential powers that are largely expanded under the Law of Foreign Enemies – a law from 1798 that was previously detention three times, and provides the basis for the logic of the American government to target British citizens during the 1812 war, to the trained Germans during the First World War, the contestants in the field of German, and Muzdaida in Glamor. The law allows the president to detain and deport migrants who live legally in the United States if they are from countries that are considered “enemies” for the government. In this case, Trump claimed that the Venezuelan Gang, Treen de Aragua, which works “in conjunction” with elements of the Maduro government, “infiltrated the United States” and was “an irregular war.”
The White House did not make the advertisement the audience for another day. Meanwhile, the government was putting Vennezuelan secrets who were in the federal reservation on the planes, preparing them for deportation. Andre was one of them. There were two hundred and thirty seven others, like him, accused of belonging to the gang. The vast majority participated in waiting for immigration cases, but there was no opportunity to compete for the alleged evidence against them. High -level Ice The official later acknowledged that many of these men have no criminal records in the United States, but they insisted that the absence of such a history “actually highlights the risks they put.”
El Salvador is a clear punitive destination. The president of the country, Nayeb, has suspended parts of the country’s constitution, and during the past three years, more than eighty thousand members of the alleged gangs were imprisoned without clear charges. In February, after a meeting in San Salvador with Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, an agent offered to accommodate immigrants who were arrested on American soil in his newly built prison, which is called the Terrorism Cabinet Center. Bohsele wrote on X. “We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to use external sources of its prison system.”
On the day Trump signed this matter, Lee Gilrrent, the veteran lawyer in the American Civil Liberties Union specialized in immigrant rights, was in a courtroom in Washington, DC, under the pretext of a case about another controversial decision he recently taken. In February, the president sent a hundred and seventy -eight men from the Venezuelan from the United States to the military complex in Guantenamo Bay, Cuba. After the US Civil Liberties Union brought a legal challenge, the Ministry of Internal Security deported men to Venezuela, it is clear that the court’s fighting over their arrival to legal representation. But the government said it intends to send more immigrants to Guantanamo. Gilrrent was trying to ensure access to lawyers. In the hours before the session, he was also monitoring early news reports stating that the president was preparing to summon the law of foreign enemies to deport more Venezuelan immigrants.
Once the session ended, Gilrrent returned to his hotel, where he was working all night with his colleagues in the Civil Liberties Union to prepare an emergency lawsuit. The idea was to prevent the government from deporting anyone under the law of foreign enemies during the case in court. “If people already have final orders to remove, the government does not need the law of foreign enemies,” Gilrrent told me. “The use of the law of foreign enemies is everything about a short circle of the immigration process, not only to eliminate listening sessions in the Immigration Court but to be able to send it to any place where the government wants.”