A 23-year-old makeup artist with no known gang affiliation was among the hundreds of Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison without due process last week.
Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder and president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, painted a harrowing picture while recounting how her client was “disappeared” during an appearance on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Thursday.
Andrys, who is gay and whose last name is being withheld due to concerns over his safety, initially arrived in the U.S. seeking asylum but was detained after immigration officials decided his tattoos could be a sign of gang affiliation.
His attorney firmly denied the accusation, telling Maddow, “These are not the tattoos of somebody who is involved with gangs. These are normal tattoos that you would see on anybody at a coffee shop anywhere in the United States or Venezuela.”
Though Andrys was scheduled to appear in U.S. immigration court last week, he was forcibly removed from the country last weekend despite a judge’s order to keep him and over 250 other men on U.S. soil until further legal review.
“,”type”:”video”,”meta”:{“author”:”Immigrant Defenders Law Center”,”author_url”:”https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7b9NJD0Tj-WkLZezjpw_7w”,”cache_age”:86400,”description”:”President and CEO of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Lindsay Toczylowski, chats with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC on March 20, 2025. \n\nOur client was one of the over 200 Venezuelan individuals deported this past weekend after the President invoked the 230-year old Alien Enemies Act of 1798. This wartime authority has been invoked only three times in the past, most notably to justify one of the darkest stains in American history: the forceful internment of individuals and families of Japanese descent in camps during World War II. In a sharply escalated attack on immigrants and asylum seekers, the administration has targeted people from Venezuela, including children as young as 14-years old, by misusing a wartime power against those accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang. But people like our LGBTQ client—a young man described as funny, sweet, and an aspiring humanitarian by his lawyer—are being forcibly sent to an El Salvador mega-prison known for its human rights violations. Our client entered lawfully, passed his credible fear screening interview, and was still forcibly removed because the government misidentified his tattoos as connecting him to the gang. He has no criminal background and no association with the gang, yet, nonetheless, he finds himself in a prison cell in El Salvador. The government will not facilitate communication between him and his lawyer, even though his asylum case in the U.S. continues. Share this post to help uplift his story and call for #dueprocessnow!”,”options”:{“_cc_load_policy”:{“label”:”Closed captions”,”value”:false},”_end”:{“label”:”End on”,”placeholder”:”ex.: 11, 1m10s”,”value”:””},”_start”:{“label”:”Start from”,”placeholder”:”ex.: 11, 1m10s”,”value”:””},”click_to_play”:{“label”:”Add your own player cover”,”value”:false}},”provider_name”:”YouTube”,”thumbnail_height”:720,”thumbnail_url”:”https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_iNQwfptvyA/maxresdefault.jpg”,”thumbnail_width”:1280,”title”:”Venezuelan Man Forcibly Removed by ICE to El Salvador Rachel Maddow 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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.
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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.
