Venezuelan deportee from US to El Salvador seeks asylum in Spain

Andry José Hernández Romero, a Venezuelan makeup artist who was among those deported from the United States to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot prison under the Trump administration, has relocated to Spain to seek asylum, citing safety concerns in his home country and distrust of U.S. authorities.

Hernández, 33, arrived in Spain in early February and is scheduled for his first asylum hearing in court within days, he told the Guardian in his first interview since leaving for Europe. He expressed hope that Spain’s liberal immigration policies would provide treatment more favorable than he experienced in the United States or Venezuela.

A hairstylist and makeup artist originally from western Venezuela, Hernández said he fled to the United States to escape persecution as a gay man and for opposing the government of then-President Nicolás Maduro.

Speaking via video call from southern Spain, Hernández is still recovering from trauma but voiced optimism about his new surroundings. “I can say I feel safe here, this is a place where I can be reborn, heal my mental health, let people know about my abilities as a makeup artist and find the happiness they took away from me more than a year ago,” he said in Spanish.

Hernández gained global attention in 2025 when he and 252 other Venezuelan migrants were abruptly deported from the United States without due process and in defiance of a court order, flown by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s high-security prison known as Cecot. Families were not notified.

Images of the bewildered and terrified group being roughed up, having their heads shaved, and lined up on the ground with bowed heads circulated worldwide, symbolizing President Donald Trump’s harsh anti-immigration agenda. The detainees were held incommunicado for months in cages, initially with no prospect of release, under allegations of ties to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua — allegations Hernández and others vehemently denied.

International human rights groups documented that Hernández and other detainees suffered psychological and physical abuse, including cases of sexual violence, before being suddenly released in a prisoner swap last summer and returned to Venezuela.

Hernández received a jubilant reception upon returning home and began trying to rebuild his life. He initially promised his family he would never leave Venezuela again.

However, after a few weeks, his sense of safety dissolved when officials came to his family’s home in Táchira. “I had received a call from the vice-president’s office and I was offered a job, which I declined, and then they came to my house and my family had to tell them I wasn’t there,” Hernández said. He had hidden during the visit.

He explained that he refused the job before the vice-president’s office could specify its nature. In August 2025, Delcy Rodríguez ran that office. Hernández did not want ties to a government that had persecuted him as a gay man, and the officials’ visit convinced him he would be surveilled by authorities.

At that time, he was back home surrounded by family, feeling protected during what he expected to be a rough transition into society. He had resumed working and even made new friends.

Months later, Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president of Venezuela following the capture of Maduro by U.S. military forces. Around the same time, Hernández decided to leave.

“That’s when I made the decision to come to Spain,” he said.

He has some relatives in Spain. Venezuelans do not require a visa to enter Spain, and those fleeing persecution are allowed to request asylum.

“I have heard that Spain is a country with open policies towards immigrants and the LGBTQ+ communities and that they don’t experience discrimination,” said Hernández. He feels secure and optimistic about making another fresh start.

In March 2025, the Trump administration controversially invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to order the expulsion of Hernández and 136 other men who ended up in Cecot. Hernández was accused of being a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which Trump designated a terrorist group and bizarrely accused of staging an invasion of the United States.

It did not matter that Hernández had explained to immigration officials that he fled Venezuela due to persecution over his sexual orientation. His crown tattoos above the names of his parents were deemed proof of gang affiliation. He has denied the charge throughout his ordeal, and his attorneys noted he has no criminal record.

Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), who represents Hernández, said that in nearly two decades of helping asylum seekers from around the world fleeing violence, she had “never been in a situation where it was not safe for a client to seek protection in the US”.

U.S. federal judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of the men deported under the Alien Enemies Act to El Salvador and allow them due process, which he ruled they had been denied. But a court of appeals recently blocked Boasberg from investigating whether the Trump administration knowingly defied his order from March 2025 to return the planes carrying Hernández and the other Venezuelan deportees.

“From a legal perspective, we believe that it’s important for him to clear his name if he wants to travel to the US in the future. But from a moral perspective, he was accused with absolutely no evidence of being part of something that he has never had anything to do with. No one should be accused of something like that without any option to refute the allegations,” said Toczylowski.

“There are no immediate options available for him [and the others] to finally have their day in court and be able to clear” their names, she added.

In Spain, where Hernández now awaits his first asylum interview scheduled for the end of the month, officials have defied the increasingly harsh immigration policies being embraced in Europe and the United States. Earlier this year, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that Spain would grant legal status to roughly 500,000 migrant workers, most from Latin America.

Spain has a strong record of taking in immigrants, especially Venezuelans seeking international protection like Hernández.

According to numbers shared by the Spanish government with the Guardian, Venezuelans made up the highest number of requests for international protection in Spain in 2025. And up to April 30 this year, more than 25,000 Venezuelans have sought asylum in Spain.

Hernández said he is still marked by the trauma he endured during his time at Cecot. For example, when someone approaches him and taps him on the shoulder, his mind jumps back to the prison. He still wants to clear his name but does not know how to do so at the moment.

Remarkably, he said: “I don’t hold a grudge against the US. I can’t judge an entire country based on the actions of a group of people like Donald Trump [or] Kristi Noem, but entering the US at this time doesn’t guarantee I will keep my freedom and that is why I will continue to fight my case from Spain.”

“Recovering my happiness will only be possible at the right place with the right people,” he said.