‘We have to clear our names’: Venezuelan make-up artist who survived Ice detainment tries to rebuild his life

Andry José Hernández Romero was one of 251 men flown from Texas to the Cecot prison in El Salvador. Now he’s seeking justice

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ndry José Hernández Romero has already picked out the color of the suit he’ll wear to the next celebration of the Three Kings festival in his home town in the Venezuelan Andes. The carnivalesque celebration of Epiphany inspired the tattoos that landed him behind bars in El Salvador, accused of belonging to Venezuela’s most feared criminal gang, Tren de Aragua.

The suit will be green, “like hope”, he said.

Now free, and speaking over Zoom from his home, Hernández, 31, lifted his shirt to show two of the nine tattoos on his body: the words mom and dad, each inked beneath a crown. “This is the big controversy that has caused me too much harm,” he says.