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.
For Hernandez’s family, the deportations are a source of constant anguish. They have had no contact with Hernandez since March 14, the last time they spoke to him on the phone from an immigration detention facility in the United States.
“I think about him every day; I cry about him every day,” said his mother, Dolores Alexis Romero de Hernandez. “What are they doing to him, how are they treating him? Is he in there with bad people?”
Hernandez is from Capacho, a town in western Venezuela with a century-old tradition of staging an elaborate festival with parades and theatrical performances on Three Kings Day, a Christian holiday in January. Hernandez met many of his childhood friends, including Cardenas, through their participation in the festival — but he was more enthusiastic about participating than most.
“Andry dedicated his life to arts and culture, and he worked hard to better his craft,” Cardenas said.
Later, Hernandez moved to Caracas for a job as a makeup artist for a state-run TV station. There, he told his family and his lawyers, he experienced humiliating and discriminatory treatment for his sexual orientation (Hernandez is gay) and for his opposition to Venezuela’s authoritarian government.
In May, Hernandez set off for the United States.
He crossed the border at a legal port of entry with an appointment under then-President Joe Biden’s CBP One program. Then, he asked for asylum.
However, because of his tattoos, he stayed in detention during the months he spent in the United States. Court records filed by his attorneys show that immigration officers took photos of all of his tattoos: a snake, roses, flowers and a butterfly.
But it was the crowns on his wrist that, according to the records, caused officers to associate him with an infamous Venezuelan gang.
“The crown has been found to be an identifier for a Tren de Aragua gang member,” an officer wrote.
Experts who study Tren de Aragua say the gang, unlike other criminal groups, does not use tattoos as markers of membership.
“It’s not like the Central American maras” — such as MS-13, which started in Los Angeles but spread to Central America after members were deported there — “or the Latin Kings, where in some cases you need to have a certain tattoo in order to belong to the gang,” said Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan investigative journalist and author of a book on Tren de Aragua. “You can have a tattoo and not belong to the gang, or you could not have any tattoos and belong to the gang.”
Hernandez’s tattoos were applied by Jose Manuel Mora, a tattoo artist who is a friend from Capacho. “For Andry, they had a special meaning because of the festival in Capacho,” Mora said.
But tattoos of crowns were also extremely popular at the time. “It was the trend," Mora said. "Between 2017 and 2019, I must have done about 60 tattoos of crowns just for people from our small town.”
In the months Hernandez spent in immigration detention in the United States, he was represented by a pro bono immigration lawyer. When Hernandez did not show up for a hearing in his asylum case, the government informed the lawyer that he had been removed to El Salvador.
“This is unprecedented,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, the organization representing Hernandez. “We have absolutely no access to our client, nor is it clear which court has jurisdiction over him at this moment.”
Hernandez’s lawyers are pursuing multiple avenues to get him out of the prison, but they say the principal obstacle to doing so is the Trump administration itself.
“The Trump administration could send a plane to Venezuela, admit their mistake and bring him back safety today,” Toczylowski said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
In March, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson posted on X that Hernandez’s “own social media indicates he is a member of Tren de Aragua.” However, she did not cite specific posts, and an NBC News review of Hernandez’s known social media accounts did not find any indications of gang activity.
The case has drawn criticism of the Trump administration from some unexpected quarters, including podcaster and Trump ally Joe Rogan.
"That’s horrific,” Rogan said on his podcast, calling Hernandez’s deportation “a horrible mistake.”
Hernandez’s loved ones, meanwhile, are left to wonder about his fate.
Cardenas worries, in particular, about what kind of treatment he might get because of his sexual orientation.
“That worries us immensely,” she said. “It’s something that keeps me up at night.”