Family fears for safety of Venezuelan makeup artist deported to Salvadoran megaprison

Growing up in Venezuela, Andry Hernandez Romero discovered an early love for theater, costume design and makeup by participating in his small town’s annual festival for Three Kings Day.
Growing up in Venezuela, Andry Hernandez Romero discovered an early love for theater, costume design and makeup by participating in his small town’s annual festival for Three Kings Day.
“He would design and sew his own costumes, and he would do the makeup for all the women in the parade,” said Reina Cardenas, Hernandez’s close childhood friend.
Later, as he pursued a career as a makeup artist, Hernandez had a crown tattooed on each of his wrists. His family says the tattoos were a symbol of his beloved Three Kings festival.
But they are also, according to U.S. government records, what landed him on a plane full of Venezuelan men the Trump administration deported to a megaprison in El Salvador.
Those deportations, carried out without court hearings under the Alien Enemies Act, are now the subject of a heated legal battle that has reached the Supreme Court — and which some say has brought the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis.
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