Makeup artist tries to rebuild life after prison

Trump officials shipped Venezuelan man, who is gay, to El Salvador, accusing him of being a gang member

- ANDREA CASTILLO

STYLIST Andry Hernández Romero spent 125 days in an El Salvador prison before returning to Venezuela.

When a door slammed shut in the childhood home of Andry Hernández Romero, he wasn't just startled.

He winced, recoiling from the noise.

Nearly a month had passed since Romero, a Hernández 32-year-old makeup artist, and 251 other Venezuelans were released from a notorious Salvadoran mega-prison.

In a Zoom interview in August from Venezuela, Hernández Romero listed the ways in which the trauma of the ordeal still manifests itself.

"When doors are slammed did you notice [my reaction] when the door made noise just now?" he said. "I can't stand keys. Being touched when I'm asleep.

If I see an officer with cuffs in their hand, I get scared and nervous." Trump administration officials accused the Venezuelan men of being members of the transnational gang Tren de Aragua and a national security threat, though many, including Hernández Romero, had no criminal histories in the U.S. or Venezuela.

MIGRANTS deported by the U.S. to El Salvador land in Maiquetia, Venezuela.

While he was confined, with no access to his attorneys or the news, Hernández Romero had no idea he had become a poster child for the movement to free the prisoners.