One of the fascinating findings in the slew of polls surfacing reactions to Trump's 100 day bundle of blunders is that people now recognize the name Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The story has broken through of the Maryland sheetmetal worker deported illegally (and in error?) to a Salvadoran torture prison. Kudos to his wife and his lawyer for their continued legal agitation for his return.
And kudos to Senator Chris Van Hollen who dared to travel to El Salvador to see a person taken from the state he represents. His mission alarmed me; I'm old enough to remember when Congressman Leo Ryan attempted such a mission to the Guyana jungle and was murdered for his pains.
Following Van Hollen, several other members of Congress have made the trip. They have not been allowed to see the prisoners, but they can help make us all more aware of these kidnapped men.
no one ... heard from Hernández Romero, who has been documented to have no history of criminal activity, since March 14.
Venezuelans.
Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist who’s reported extensively on criminal groups in Venezuela, published the definitive book on Tren de Aragua. “The truth is that a tattoo identifying Tren de Aragua does not exist,” she told me. “Tren de Aragua does not use any tattoos as a form of gang identification; no Venezuelan gang does.” In Rísquez’s view, tattoos are a completely unreliable indicator of someone’s criminal proclivities; rather, they reflect contemporary fashions and socioeconomic class. “Most young people in Latin America these days have tattoos,” she said. ... Rísquez went on, “People get a tattoo because it means something particular to them.”
Andry’s tattoos have an immediate significance to the people in [the small Venezuelan town of] Capacho. For a hundred and eight years, the town has held a special festival for the celebration of Three Kings Day, replete with elaborate theatrical acts, sets, costumes, and casts of dozens. The holiday is observed widely across Venezuela (and indeed throughout much of the Christian world), but the production in Capacho is legendary in the country and has been awarded distinguished status as a national patrimonio, or heritage. “This work represents for the community of Capacho the greatest cultural expression of street theatre,” Jorge Cárdenas, a leader of the Foundation of Reyes Magos of Capacho, told me earlier this week. “To speak of Capacho is to speak of the Reyes Magos.”
Cárdenas has known Andry since he was a boy, when Andry participated in the festival’s program for children. When we spoke, Cárdenas described Andry’s contributions to local theatre, including all of his roles in the festival itself, before leaving me a series of messages brimming with literary and religious detail. Andry was one of the thirteen main actors in the show, a makeup stylist for the others, and the costume designer for nearly two dozen dancers. One of the principal symbols of Three Kings Day is a crown. “Andry is a great lover of the festival, and the two crowns on his wrists are a tribute to his passion for it,” Cárdenas said.
Nobody has been able to speak to Hernández Romero since ICE secretly flew him away.
Andry’s American lawyers are caught in something of a paradox. They’re vocal about sharing the details of his disappearance, because, if he fades from the news, his situation may grow even more dire. Yet Andry is also an asylum seeker. Disclosing the full identity of someone fleeing persecution is inherently risky. ...
[Lindsay] Toczylowski and her colleagues had debated whether disclosing that Andry was gay would make him a target inside the Salvadoran prison. They decided it was pointless to try to hide it, and that maybe it would make the public more sympathetic to his case. Ordinarily, this would be a conversation they could have had with Andry. Under the circumstances, all they could do was discuss it with his mother. She told them, “Do absolutely everything you can to get him out of there.”
Congressman Garcia, himself an immigrant who came to this country as a child from Peru, gets the level of danger to Hernández Romero.
“He clearly was scared for his life because he was gay,” Garcia said. “And then we picked him up and sent him to this horrific prison. He hasn’t had any access to his family or legal counsel or really anyone.” ...
... Garcia said the situation is growing more alarming by the day, particularly in light of the Trump administration’s continued use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove immigrants without hearings — even after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency order blocking further deportations under the statute.
“Right now, Trump is still defying the Supreme Court,” Garcia told The Advocate. “He’s doubling down on the idea that Andry is not coming back when the Supreme Court is saying that he should.”
... “We have to highlight his case and make sure people know.”
The Trump regime would like nothing more than for its victims to simply disappear. We can't let them get away with this.
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