Gay Venezuelan Makeup Artist Among Hundreds Deported Without Due Process

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 boarded off a place and processed for detention to his social media.

Remarking on the 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. deported migrants earlier this month in exchange for $6 million a year, paid for by American tax dollars.