Andry is finally home.
Before a writer unknown to me started keeping a daily digital vigil for Andry, he was one of the few kidnapping victims to be humanized in the media. We were told his name and a few things about him.
Andry José Hernández Romero.
Andry wasn’t just one of hundreds of men wrongfully accused of gang membership without evidence or probable cause, abducted, and illegally detained in CECOT, El Salvador’s now-famous torture prison. He was an openly gay hairdresser and makeup artist from Venezuela, who, despite his loving family and friends, was in danger. He was legally seeking asylum in the U.S. with an approved credible fear application.
Andry’s was one of the few names we the general public knew of the non-white people being targeted and disappeared by ICE and the MAGA administration. He was one of many victims being third-country-ed, instead of being deported back to their country of origin, imprisoned against their Fourth Amendment rights, and denied access to any attorneys.
After four months and two days of incarceration that violates the UN’S Declaration of International Human Rights under conditions that violate the Geneva Conventions, Andry saw sunlight again. He is with his family and friends again.
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller interviewed Andry through a translator on August 7, 2025 where he sat outside with embroidered curtains rustling behind him.
He said Miller didn’t have to apologize for our government, who kidnapped him and 251 other men, “processed” them without due process, incarcerated them in an unsanitary facility in inhumane conditions, beat them, and sexually assaulted him.
He reminded the American interviewer that there are good and bad people in every country, that your nationality doesn’t make you good or evil.
And he said something more beautiful than I could’ve imagined.
“We came in as 252 strangers. We left as 252 brothers.” Several of Andry’s new brothers are getting married this year, two in the next few weeks. Andry is doing their fiancées’ makeup and he can’t wait.
He couldn’t stop saying how happy he is, how immense his happiness is, their happiness is now.
“Don’t tell me there’s no room in this country for a beautiful soul like Andry — that he has no right to claim this country as his own in the name of freedom, as my ancestors did. This country is being run by bigots and criminals, but a day of justice will come.” — Andrew Ordover
We should be so lucky as to call a beautiful soul like Andry our fellow American. But it is crucial to remember that even “ugly” souls are legally entitled to due process and the rule of law too. The Constitution of the United States protects everyone within our borders, regardless of their personality, their work ethic, their benevolence, likability, resilience, or any other trait. We do not have to qualify for American due process, we just have to be within American jurisdiction.
Andry’s positivity and gratitude are not what qualifies him for due process and the rule of law. He is entitled to due process and the rule of law because he is a human being.
Everyone one is legally entitled to due process and the rule of law. That is the primary difference between a representative democracy and an authoritarian state.
And will that “day of justice” come for those who bend the rule of law to their politically corrupt and morally depraved will? History’s greatest monsters rarely pay fairly for their crimes. Hitler committed suicide before he was captured. Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet coasted through a series of house arrests and died by congestive heart failure and pulmonary edema before he could be convicted of decades of human rights violations. George W. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were never convicted of war crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan. Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates almost a half-million civilian died as a result of post-9/11 violence throughout Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
Bush is breezily retired, painting water colors and enjoying a public friendship with Michelle Obama.
Since we live in a system where criminal impunity can be bought, the justice I’m praying for now is preemptive: may no more innocent civilians suffer like Andry or the millions before him.
As much as we love our bootstrap success stories, you do not have to have formal education, gainfully employed, able-bodied, or a genius to “earn” constitutional rights.
If you are a deadbeat dad with a drinking problem, you still deserve due process before you’re thrown into an unmarked van by masked men.
Grouchy assholes who don’t return their shopping cart and refuse to buy cookies from Girl Scouts are still legally entitled to be read their rights by trained officers of the law who clearly identify themselves and the agency they work for before they arrest you. You then deserve to consult legal counsel, and get a phone call. If you can’t afford bail, which is another classist corruption of our justice system, you deserve to wait for your trial in a facility that meets OSHA standards for health and safety, as well as international standards for humane treatment of prisoners. Then you deserve a trial by a jury of your peers.
Anyone who survives CECOT or Alligator Abu Ghraib or any of the countless other for-profit concentration camps the MAGA government is building with our tax dollars criticizes the U.S., Americans, or our government, is still a human being who deserved due process. The rule of law still failed them and they have every reason to be, as they say, incandescent with rage.
Torture survivors do not owe anyone inspiration porn. Torture victims do not owe their torturers understanding let alone forgiveness. Kidnapping victims don’t owe the rest of the world a full-circle resilience that reaffirms or renews our faith in humanity.
They only “owe” healing and moving on to themselves. Let’s pray that every last one of them can.
People who have survived unspeakable degradation and violence are entitled to process their trauma in any healthy way that works for them. Whether that involves forgiving my government or the idea of my country or Americans as a whole is immaterial.
It’s tempting to bask in his benevolence and resilience. Peace-loving Americans need to be grateful that he’s finally home safe but focus on making sure no one else gets abducted, illegally detained, and tortured.
Andry’s joy and benevolence are his own glide path. We can rejoice in his safety and pray for his healing. We can even feel warmth from his inspiring perspective. But his happy ending is all too rare for a nightmare that should be no one’s story. It is still incumbent upon Americans who believe in democracy and basic human decency to hold torturers accountable and to dismantle their corrupt systems.
We must fight for justice and healing for those already victimized by racial profiling and illegal deportations. And we must do everything in our power to prevent these injustices from continuing.
We can do it together.
As poet and essayist Ross Gay says, “We are beholden to the grand one another.”
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: De an Sun On Unsplash
