Jon Lovett and Tim Miller team up to ‘raise hell' over gay asylum-seeker vanished to El Salvador by Trump

Yahoo

23-05-2025

When Jon Lovett and Tim Miller take the stage alongside Sarah Longwell — a prominent anti-Trump conservative, publisher of The Bulwark, and out lesbian advocate — at Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Theatre during WorldPride, the tone will be fast, furious, and undeniably funny. Expect jokes. Possibly drag. But beneath the riotous banter and righteous shade, the 'Free Andry" event is dead serious.
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The Crooked Media–Bulwark live show, slated for June 6, is a fundraiser for Andry Hernández Romero, a 31-year-old gay Venezuelan asylum-seeker who came to the United States legally, seeking protection from violence for being gay. Instead, he was disappeared by President Donald Trump's administration and deported to El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison — a place so dystopian it's been compared to a modern-day concentration camp. His lawyers haven't heard from him since. There is no proof of life.
Related: Jon Lovett warns Democrats that 'every inch Trump gets is an inch we don't get back'
'This is the worst thing that Trump has done — which is a very competitive category,' Miller said in an interview with The Advocate. 'They kidnapped someone who followed the rules, lied about him, and disappeared him.'
Hernández Romero's ordeal began after he made an asylum appointment through the CBP One app, a legal channel established by the Biden administration and repurposed under Trump. He passed a credible fear interview and was detained at Otay Mesa Detention Center, a CoreCivic-run facility in California. He had no criminal history. His lawyer was preparing for his hearing. Then he vanished.
Days later, photojournalists captured Hernández Romero being marched off a plane in El Salvador, shackled, sobbing, his head forcibly shaved. According to a Time journalist, he said, "I'm gay" and "I'm a stylist!' he cried to the guards.
He was taken to CECOT, a mega-prison designed to hold tens of thousands of alleged gang members — many without charges, let alone convictions. There is no phone access. No mail. No contact with the outside world.
Related: Gay asylum-seeker's lawyer worries for the makeup artist's safety in Salvadoran 'hellhole' prison
'They are treating him as if he's not a person,' Miller said. 'Because once they admit he's a human being, it brings the whole thing crashing down.'
The deportation was based on a now-debunked claim: The two crown tattoos on Hernández Romero's wrists — placed above the names of his mother and father — were gang symbols. The accusation originated from a former Wisconsin police officer turned ICE contractor — a man fired years earlier after crashing his car while drunk. ICE ran with it anyway.
Hernández Romero's lawyer previously told The Advocate there's no evidence the tattoos were related to gang affiliation and that the markings were a personal tribute to Hernández Romero's family and his years performing in religious pageants.
On social media, he appeared not as a gang member but as a joyful, flamboyant artist surrounded by beauty queens and runway glitter.
Related: Democratic lawmakers fly to El Salvador and demand action on gay man Trump sent to CECOT prison
Lovett was struck by the absurdity of the government's rationale. 'There was something really clarifying and horrible about a person begging for someone to listen — 'I'm not a member of any gang, I'm gay,'' he said. 'They're willing to lie so brazenly about a case this clear. What lies wouldn't they tell?'
Lovett, the out co-founder of Crooked Media, Pod Save America cohost, and former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, is known for his political satire and co-hosting duties on Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It. Miller, a former Republican strategist turned Trump critic, is a writer and podcast host at The Bulwark and the author of Why We Did It, a memoir about breaking from the GOP.
For both Miller and Lovett, the case is a moral breaking point — and a political line in the sand. It's also a haunting example of the Trump administration's vision for immigration — one that flouts judicial orders, distorts wartime law, and reduces queer asylum-seekers to disposable bodies.
'They want to be the heel,' Miller said. 'They revel in being the bad guy in the movie. They want people to be afraid — to feel like if they step out of line, if they even touch the system, they could vanish too.'
Related: Robert Garcia demands answers in case of gay Venezuelan migrant deported to El Salvador prison
Lovett called the situation a 'Kafkaesque bureaucratic doom loop.' The chilling part, he said, isn't just the violence. It's the intentional chaos. 'Feckless bureaucratic incompetence is also incredibly dangerous,' he said. 'It kills people. It destroys lives.'
For Miller, the true horror is that it could have been worse. 'They would have liked to have done more already,' he said. 'They've just been blocked by the courts because they did it in such a ham-fisted and stupid way. Their incompetence is the only reason we're not seeing more Andrys.'
The goal with 'Free Andry' is to stop it from happening again.
Lovett and Miller were particularly incensed by the May exchange between Rep. Robert Garcia and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a House committee hearing. When Garcia pleaded with Noem to confirm whether Hernández Romero was alive, she refused.
'Noem wouldn't even dignify a question as a mother, on behalf of another mother, about where Andry is,' Lovett said.
Miller saw it as part of a broader strategy to strip people like Hernández Romero of their personhood. 'They don't want to treat these people as human,' he said. 'Because once you start treating them as human, then that has to change the whole process by which they're acting.' That refusal to admit error — even when confronted with a clear injustice — is, he said, central to Trumpism. 'The ethos is: never give an inch. Never acknowledge fault. Because if you admit Andry is innocent, then it opens up a Pandora's box.'
Related: Gay Venezuelan asylum-seeker 'disappeared' to Salvadoran mega-prison under Trump order, Maddow reveals
The stakes, they said, go far beyond one case. 'This is a test,' Lovett warned. 'They picked this fight on purpose. If we don't fight now, it will only get worse.'
Miller agreed: 'Their incompetence has benefited others who might have been disappeared next. Had they been more efficient within the bounds of the law, there's a lot of scary stuff they could already be doing.'
They described a pattern of ICE disappearances so chaotic and unaccountable that it feels dystopian.
'It's the bad luck of having touched the system and run into the wrong ICE official,' Lovett said. 'It's bureaucratic incompetence, but it can be more harmful too. It kills people. It destroys lives.'
They also pushed back on the Trump administration's attempts to isolate cases like Hernández Romero's from others like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father mistakenly deported under similar conditions. 'They want the public to think it's just one guy with one tattoo, or one guy with one checkered history,' Miller said. 'But it's not. It's a pattern.'
Miller and Lovett emphasized that the fundraiser is a party with a purpose. The program will feature surprise guests, irreverent commentary, and what Lovett called 'the Gs and the Ls coming together.' All proceeds will go to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which represents Hernández Romero and others detained under similar circumstances.
'It's going to be a big fun gay live show at the Lincoln,' Lovett said. 'Not officially part of WorldPride — or, I don't know, some legal queen will come after us — but we're going to raise money and raise hell.'
They're hoping that by turning attention toward Hernández Romero's story — and the broader pattern of ICE disappearances — they can pressure lawmakers to act. 'If this just becomes background noise,' Lovett warned, 'they'll keep doing it. They'll move on to the next plane.'
For Miller, the need to act is visceral.
'I've been getting very mad about it at random times during the day,' he said. 'I did a rage selfie video in a hotel room. That didn't feel satisfying. Then I was in the shower the other day, and I was getting very upset about it, which is usually different from what I'm doing in the shower. I got out and texted Jon: We need to do something more.'
Legal advocates continue pushing in court. Lindsay Toczylowski, a 15-year immigration attorney and executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said that without media coverage, the government's deportation program will keep operating in the shadows. Every day Hernández Romero remains in isolation, she warns, his life could be at risk. She previously told The Advocate that the responsibility falls squarely on the Trump administration if something happens to him.
Still, his legal team holds out hope. They believe increased pressure from elected officials, like those recently traveling to El Salvador demanding proof of life, could break through. If someone is allowed to see Hernández Romero and report back that he's alive, it may be the first step toward bringing him home.
For Lovett, the fight for justice can't just be urgent — it has to be magnetic.
'Part of the way you get people to come around to seeing things from our point of view,' he said, 'is by being a fun movement...We have to be a fun movement."
Miller added, 'It's okay to protest about serious things, and make it something people want to be a part of.'