Gay Venezuelan Makeup Artist Among Hundreds Deported Without Due Process

A 23-year-old makeup artist with no known gang affiliation was among the hundreds of Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison without due process last week.

Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder and president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, painted a harrowing picture while recounting how her client was “disappeared” during an appearance on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Thursday.

Andrys, who is gay and whose last name is being withheld due to concerns over his safety, initially arrived in the U.S. seeking asylum but was detained after immigration officials decided his tattoos could be a sign of gang affiliation.

His attorney firmly denied the accusation, telling Maddow, “These are not the tattoos of somebody who is involved with gangs. These are normal tattoos that you would see on anybody at a coffee shop anywhere in the United States or Venezuela.”

Though Andrys was scheduled to appear in U.S. immigration court last week, he was forcibly removed from the country last weekend despite a judge’s order to keep him and over 250 other men on U.S. soil until further legal review.

The last time he spoke to his family, they believed he would deported to Venezuela, according to an interview with his mother and the Venezuelan news outlet Crónica Uno detailed by The Advocate.

Instead, he was sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, where he has yet to speak to his family or his attorneys.

In her communications with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Toczylowski was told the agency would not help her make contact with Andrys.

“They will not facilitate communication with our client, because he has, in their words, been removed,” she told Maddow.

Toczylowski said she has grave concerns about Andrys’ safety at CECOT, a 40,000-capacity prison complex where people are often held without a trial or release date and kept in brutally spartan living conditions.

Telling Maddow her team is “pursuing all avenues” to seek Andrys’ release, she added, “Because our client’s life is at risk. We’re concerned for his safety. And the fact that he was forcibly taken from the United States with no due process … it’s something that really shocks the conscience in a way that we haven’t seen since family separation happened in 2018.”

Last Sunday, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele appeared to celebrate the arrival of the deportees as he posted a video of shackled men being ushered off a plane and processed for detention to his social media.

Remarking on U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg’s unheeded order blocking the deportations, Bukele’s caption read, “Oopsie… Too late.”

The staunch Trump ally, who has called himself the “world’s coolest dictator,” agreed to take in the U.S.’s deported migrants earlier this month in exchange for $6 million a year, paid for by American tax dollars.