In the months following the second inauguration of Donald Trump, headlines documenting the mass deportations of undocumented and legal immigrants have taken over the news cycle. Accounts of men, women and children being taken from their homes, places of work and cars, placed in handcuffs and, in some cases, being shipped off to international prison camps in dictator-ruled countries like El Salvador and Venezuela.
One case taking over international headlines is the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father the Trump administration has continued to claim is affiliated with the MS-13 gang. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys and wife have described him as a responsible father and a caring family man whose life was shattered when he was arrested by ICE agents on March 12 and sent three days later to a notorious Salvadoran prison known as CECOT.
“The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit wrote Thursday. “Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order.”
Abrego Garcia’s story is one of thousands like it, including for some in the LGBTQ+ community.
According to Funders for LGBTQ Issues, there are an estimated 904,000 LGBTQ+ immigrants in the United States (both undocumented and documented), which means that more than one in 10 LGBTQ+ adults are immigrants. Nearly one third of those queer-identifying immigrants are undocumented, making it more difficult for them to receive education, healthcare and economic opportunity.
It also means now, under a new Trump administration hellbent on deporting as many immigrants as possible, LGBTQ+ immigrants are more vulnerable than ever. According to the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute, up to three percent of non-U.S. citizens living in the U.S., or 640,000 people, identify as LGBTQ+. This includes as many as 288,000 who are undocumented, making them among the first affected by President Trump’s immigration policies.
In fact, the deportation of these LGBTQ+ migrants has already begun.
Asylum seeker and gay man Andry Hernandez Romero, 31, was a stylist from Venezuela who realized the country’s political unrest, violent crime and social decline made him a direct target for harassment and potential harm. That fear prompted him to make the massive trek to the United States, even crossing the 60-mile, thickly vegetated and swamp-like region known as the Darien Gap. Government agents detained him when he initially attempted to cross the border for a prearranged meeting with a US government official to seek asylum.
A slight man with youthful features, he was “forcibly removed” from the U.S. on March 15 and sent to El Salvador. His attorneys from Immigrant Defenders Law Center Litigation and Advocacy said the reason behind their client’s deportation was allegations he was a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-based gang. That, however, has since been debunked. Romero’s tattoos, done while he was still a teen, were initially an acknowledgment of his involvement with a youth drama club and later enhanced to pay homage to his parents. Regardless, an agent at California’s Otay Mesa detention center, according to a report from The Guardian, insisted the tattoos were gang-related. With no other evidence, he was deported to the El Salvadoran prison.
“It’s very flimsy,” said Immigrant Defenders Law Center Litigation and Advocacy Director Alvaro M. Huerta. “These are the types of tattoos that any artist in New York City or Los Angeles would have. It’s nothing that makes him a gang member.”
According to reporting from the Washington Blade, Huerta said U.S. officials on Monday confirmed Romero is “indeed in El Salvador. Directing Attorney of Policy and Advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center Margaret Cargioli said the LGBTQ+ asylum seeker was one of the nearly 200 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, a prison with more human rights violation allegations than one could count.
Videos posted by El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele show men, including the 200 men sent from the U.S., in white uniforms, with their heads shaved, running bent over while being moved into the mega prison. Other images have shown cells with rows upon rows of bunk beds, overcrowded with men who have either committed crimes against humanity or committed the crime of fleeing to America for protection, as in the case of Romero.
ABC News reported CECOT — the prison where Hernandez and Garcia are being held — has been on the watchlist for an infinite number of human rights advocacy organizations.
Juanita Goebertus, the director of the Americas Division of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, has said detainees in CECOT are denied communication with their relatives and lawyers, only having appearances in court remotely via the internet in online hearings and in groups of several hundred detainees at the same time.
“The Salvadoran government has described people held in CECOT as ‘terrorists,’ and has said that they ‘will never leave,'” Goebertus said. CECOT prisoners only leave their cell for 30 minutes a day and sleep on metal beds in overcrowded cells, according to Cargioli. “They only have about half an hour outside of their windowless cells to be outside in a hallway of the prison,” she explained. “They are overcrowded within each of the cells, and they’re sleeping on metal.”
Amnesty International, an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, has published reports of alleged systematic abuse of detainees and “patterns of grave human rights violations.” In fact, these same findings were actually acknowledged by the U.S. Department of State in a 2023 human rights report which also claimed there have been significant human rights issues in Salvadoran prisons.
“Amnesty International has extensively documented the inhumane conditions within detention centers in El Salvador, including the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) where those removed are now being held, ” Ana Piquer, the Americas director at Amnesty International, said in a statement. “Reports indicate extreme overcrowding, lack of access to adequate medical care, and widespread ill-treatment amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
Now, the same government which deemed prisons like CECOT a walking international law violation is sending its own people to be incarcerated in a place known to never release its imprisoned.
The images coming from CECOT and other detention facilities hold eerie similarities to the pictures of Auschwitz and other concentration camps in Europe during the Holocaust — gaunt figures with shaved heads, emaciated bodies, the life and hope drained from their eyes, as those who keep them captive rob their very humanity.
Yes, there are real terrorists and criminals sent to these prisons. However, individuals like Andry Hernandez Romero and Abrego Garcia definitely don’t belong in these concentration camps disguised as prisons. We can’t turn a blind eye — it’s clear Trump has an agenda, and that agenda is to ship off those he sees as criminals to places where they will be tortured, or worse.
This isn’t fear mongering — this is Trump’s America, where his appointed counter-terrorism czar Sebastian Gorka has said those who side with Abrego Garcia are “on the side of the terrorists,” and could be prosecuted for “aiding and abetting.”
“It’s not left and right, it’s not even Republican or Democrat. There’s one line that divides us: Do you love America, or do you hate America? It’s really quite that simple,” Gorka told Newsmax on Wednesday. “We have people that love America, like the president, like his cabinet, like the directors of his agencies, who want to protect Americans. And then there’s the other side that is on the side of the cartel members, on the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists … you have to ask yourself: Are they technically aiding and abetting them? Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute.”
Trump, Gorka and the entire administration won’t stop at immigrants. They will continue to chip away at the powers protected in the Constitution they swear to uphold but continue to violate, the very foundation of our nation’s values and what truly makes America great. This isn’t an attack on immigrants – it’s an attack on America itself.
Additional information was added to this story by Qnotes staff.