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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Justo Robles

Venezuelan makeup artist who was deported to El Salvador seeks asylum in Spain: ‘I feel safe here’

An older woman and a younger man stand together.
Hernández attends mass with his mother, Dolores Alexis Romero de Hernández, in Capacho, Táchira state, Venezuela, on 24 July 2025. Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images

One of the Venezuelan men sent from the US to El Salvador’s most notorious prison by Donald Trump has moved to Spain to request asylum after concluding that he did not feel safe back home and did not trust US authorities sufficiently to return to fight his legal case.

Andry José Hernández Romero left Venezuela for Spain in early February and is due for his first asylum hearing in court there in a few days, hoping that the country’s liberal approach to immigration will afford him kinder treatment than the US or his own country had provided him, he revealed to the Guardian in his first interview since leaving for Europe.

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