A gay asylum seeker is in a brutal El Salvador prison, where Kristi Noem had a photo op

The cruelty is the point.

It’s hard not to feel sickened upon reading about Andrys, a gay man who was deported to El Salvador on the notorious flights in which the Trump administration defied a judge’s orders, using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport people with no due process.

Like many others among the men we’re learning about who were on the flights, Andrys, whose attorney spoke with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, had no gang affiliation nor committed any crimes, even though ICE has claimed the men had tattoos that showed they were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

“He is in fact a makeup artist,” Melissa Shepard of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which is representing him, told NBC, and has asked that his last name be withheld due to safety concerns. “The history of his photos provides background information for his love of the arts and absolutely no association with any type of gang.”

The 31-year-old came to the U.S. fleeing persecution under the Maduro regime in Venezuela. He passed a “credible fear interview” which determines the validity of an asylum seeker’s claim. He had an immigration appointment for his asylum claim at the time he was taken into custody. He never made it to his hearing—where he would have been afforded due process—as he was abruptly put on one of the flights to a truly frightening place.

Andrys and the many other migrants on the flights who committed no crimes are inside a brutal mega-prison—the largest in the Americas, which can hold up to 40,000 inmates—called the Center for Terrorism Confinement, where the most violent criminals, including mass murderers, are confined.

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According to CNN’s David Culver and his colleagues who traveled there last year, the cells are “built to hold 80 or so inmates” and the men are held there for 23.5 hours a day, with the lights on 24 hours a day.

“The only furniture is tiered metal bunks, with no sheets, pillows or mattresses … an open toilet, a cement basin and plastic bucket for washing and a large jug for drinking water.” The prison has been cited for human rights violations because of the violent treatment by the guards and the harsh conditions.

El Salvador’s authoritarian leader, Nayib Bukele—a self-styled “world’s coolest dictator”—has laughed off criticism of the human rights abuses at CECOT from international leaders. And now he’s cut a deal with Trump to take deported migrants who are citizens of other countries in return for $6 million dollars.

In a grotesque display, Trump’s dog-killing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem went to El Salvador for a photo op at the prison this week, claiming those who were deported there were “terrorists”—offering no evidence, and, again, there was no due process for the deportees—and warned that this would be the fate of other migrants in the U.S. or those who come to the U.S. Noem was there because, as has been said many times, the cruelty is the point. They revel in showing their brutal actions, and using them to threaten others.

Even after a U.S. judge put a temporary retraining order in place stopping Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport anyone—and after the order was upheld on appeal—there’s been no order to return those who were sent on the three flights to the El Salvador prison without due process.

If Andrys ever gets out of the wretched El Salvador prison and is deported back to Venezuela, he’ll face persecution, likely including prison there as well.

LGBTQ people experienced an increase in human rights abuses in Venezuela following the widely condemned election last July in which President Nicholas Maduro engaged in fraud, stealing the election. LGBTQ people, who have few protections in a country that uses violence to intimate people, had largely supported Edmundo González, the opposition leader. Gonzalez ultimately had to flee to Spain, where he gained asylum.

But his supporters did not have that luxury. They faced a dictator who, right out of the authoritarian playbook, tried to distract from his having stolen the election by scapegoating groups that opposed him and targeting the leaders among them.

Maduro’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, called transgender people “human aberrations,” while Diosdado Cabello, the political head of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, went after LGBTQ activists.

As the Washignton Blade reported, “Repression has increased in the wake of the election, with more than 1,500 arbitrary arrests and summary convictions,” and among them were prominent LGBTQ activists. NBC reported that Andrys was an outspoken critic of the Maduro government, someone who likely faced government abuses if he stayed in Venezuela.

One of Andrys’s other attorneys, Alvaro M. Huerta, says it’s “hard to say” if he now has any legal recourse.

“He still has an ongoing case in immigration court here,” Huerta told the Blade, noting that one of his attorneys showed up in court last week for his hearing, and that he has another scheduled for next week. “Presumably they should have to allow him to appear, at least virtually, for court because he still has these cases.”

But no one knows what that Trump administration will do, and they’ve already defied judges’ orders several times.

Yesterday, a Turkish Tufts University student, Romeysa Ozturk, was pulled off the street by a group of masked people who didn’t identify themselves, after which videos of the chilling abduction—and that’s the only word to describe it—went viral.

Her student visa was revoked, and she’s being detained; the only reason appears to be an op-ed she cowrote, criticizing the university on issues regarding Israel and Gaza. She hadn’t even taken part in protests. But the U.S. government, without giving any proof, said her visa was revoked and she was detained because she is a supporter of Hamas.

A judge ruled that Ozturk not be removed from Massachusetts, but the government defied that order and apparently has sent her to a detention facility in Louisiana.

These are only two stories that have broken through because of media coverage or, as in the case of Osturk, it was caught on video.There are so many more actions like this happening all around us. We need to hear Democrats slamming not only these horrendous and unlawful activities but also pointing to Trump’s defiance of the judges’ rulings. If the courts are the only check that’s left and Trump is increasingly defying the courts, then we—and our leaders—have no choice but to be yelling loudly.

And in the last few weeks that’s actually had an effect. Because of a forceful response, Trump’s been on the run and reversed on several actions, including the pulling down of Jackie Robinson’s history on the Pentagon website and the plan to let Elon Musk see the war plans in the event of a military confrontation with China.

Trump even backtracked and claimed he didn’t sign the order deporting people to El Salvador—when his signature is right there—and he’s clearly unnerved by the huge security breach this week that has become known as Signalgate, in which even Republican voters are expressing alarm, as Democrats have kept the story out front by loudly calling for resignations.

There’s a lot to yell about, for sure. But right now, among the few things we and our leaders have to make any difference are our voices.