Philip Holsinger, a photojournalist from Nashville, Tenn., watched as a young man wept while a guard pushed him to the floor at CECOT, the El Salvadoran prison notorious for human-rights abuses.
“I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber,” said the man, who Holsinger would later write “didn’t look like what I had expected” because “he wasn’t a tattooed monster.” The man was Andry Hernandez Romero, a Venezuelan man who had come to the United States in 2024 in search of asylum.
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Andry José Hernández Romero is one of the 238 men that the U.S. government captured without due process and sent to an El Salvadoran prison known for human-rights violations. Photo courtesy Andry José Hernández Romero / Facebook
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Andry-Jose-Hernandez-Romero_courtesy.jpg?fit=300%2C300&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Andry-Jose-Hernandez-Romero_courtesy.jpg?fit=741%2C741&ssl=1″ onerror=”if (typeof newspackHandleImageError === ‘function’) newspackHandleImageError(this);” src=”https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Andry-Jose-Hernandez-Romero_courtesy.jpg?resize=741%2C741&ssl=1″ alt=”A clean-cut man with brown hair and brown eyes looking at the viewer while he stands in front of rainbow balloons” class=”wp-image-332768″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Andry-Jose-Hernandez-Romero_courtesy.jpg?w=741&ssl=1 741w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Andry-Jose-Hernandez-Romero_courtesy.jpg?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Andry-Jose-Hernandez-Romero_courtesy.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Andry-Jose-Hernandez-Romero_courtesy.jpg?resize=600%2C600&ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Andry-Jose-Hernandez-Romero_courtesy.jpg?resize=400%2C400&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Andry-Jose-Hernandez-Romero_courtesy.jpg?resize=200%2C200&ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Andry-Jose-Hernandez-Romero_courtesy.jpg?w=370&ssl=1 370w” sizes=”(max-width: 741px) 100vw, 741px”>Andry José Hernández Romero is one of the 238 men that the U.S. government captured without due process and sent to an El Salvadoran prison known for human-rights violations. Photo courtesy Andry José Hernández Romero / Facebook
It was the night of March 15, 2025, and Hernandez Romero was just one of the 238 men U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had captured and, in defiance of a judge’s order, sent to be locked up in the El Salvadoran prison based on unsubstantiated allegations without even a whiff of due process.
In the prison’s intake room, Holsinger watched as trustees took electric shavers to the men’s heads.
“The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell,” the photojournalist wrote in TIME, referring to Hernandez Romero, in a stirring photo essay showing the dystopian hell these men were dropped off into. “He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained
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