US Edition
How a Venezuelan Migrant Kept Faith Alive in Salvadoran Prison ‘Hell’
EL SALVADOR, JUL 24 – Andry José Hernández Romero was imprisoned 125 days in El Salvador's CECOT facility after deportation amid unproven gang allegations and is now reunited with family in Venezuela.
- Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist, was deported from the US to El Salvador and detained for 125 days in the CECOT prison before returning home to Venezuela in July 2025.
- His deportation occurred under a Trump administration order using the Alien Enemies Act, which expelled over 250 Venezuelan men accused without due process of gang affiliation.
- While in detention, Hernández and others reported experiencing torture, sexual abuse, food deprivation, and beatings with rubber bullets; however, U.S. federal authorities rejected these allegations and labeled the men as criminals.
- Hernández expressed gratitude for public support, saying, "It fills me with so much peace... that I was never alone, from day one," while his lawyers and advocates called the deportations a political abuse and a dark precedent.
- His release and return were part of a prisoner-swap deal between Venezuela and the US, guaranteeing freedom for 252 Venezuelan migrants in exchange for US nationals and political prisoners, raising concerns about immigrant rights and due process.
25 Articles
25 Articles
How a Venezuelan migrant kept faith alive in Salvadoran prison ‘hell’
By Stefano Pozzebon, Camille Rodríguez Montilla, Michael Rios, CNN (CNN) — They were the worst 125 days of his life: locked up in a foreign prison, allegedly subjected to torture, never knowing when or even if he would ever get out. Jerce Reyes said he, along with 251 other Venezuelan migrants, felt like the “living dead” inside El Salvador’s Center for Terrorism Confinement. They had been deported there from the US after being accused of gang i…
Idaho Press
Venezuelans freed from El Salvador prison, and other top photos from Latin America and the Caribbean
Venezuelans were reunited with their families after spending four months in prison in El Salvador, where the U.S. government transferred them, accusing them of being members of a foreign gang in the U.S. illegally. In Brazil, former President Jair Bolsonaro…
Makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero describes horrific sexual & physical abuse at CECOT in El Salvador
After 125 days in silence, detained inside an El Salvador concrete fortress built to disappear people, gay makeup artist 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.“It was an encounter with torture and death,” Hernández, 32, told journalists at his family home in Capacho on Wednesday, des…
The Advocate
Gay makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero describes horrific sexual & physical abuse at CECOT in El Salvador
He called it "an encounter with torture and death."
“Guards Sexually Abused Me,” Makeup Artist Andry Romero Finally Free From Trumpian Hell
After 125 harrowing days, gay Venezuelan makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero is free. He was released from the concrete walls of El Salvador’s notorious Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT), a maximum-security prison described by many as a modern-day gulag. Now back home in Venezuela, he alleges a horrifying ordeal of torture, sexual abuse, […]
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