‘One hairdresser' is the voice of complicity in 2025

Andry Hernandez Romero and the others whose names we don't know are also victims of state-sponsored violence.

By Michael Franklin

When I first heard the news about Andry Hernandez Romero, I’m not going to lie, it shook me. I was appalled and terrified because his freedom was taken without hesitation. Andry is a 31-year-old gay asylum-seeker from Venezuela. A makeup artist, he once worked in the beauty pageant circuit and had fled Venezuela after being targeted, both for his queerness and for his political activism. He came to the United States seeking safety, and he did everything right. He submitted his asylum paperwork. The U.S. government officially acknowledged that the threats against him were real and valid. He had no criminal record. He followed the process.

Then, one day, he disappeared.

Through reports from 60 Minutes and Time Magazine photographer Philip Holsinger, we now know that Andry was deported under the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used and deeply antiquated wartime law. He was taken to a Salvadoran prison without a hearing and was witnessed proclaiming his innocence and crying for his mother as intake authorities assaulted him. His attorney, Lindsay Toczylowski, stated that she has “grave concerns” for his survival. And, as of this writing, we don’t know Andry’s status. And that’s unconscionable.

Stories like Andry’s haunt me. So does the story of Kilmar Abrego García—a legal resident of Maryland who was deported to the same inhumane prison and also without due process. And I think of the countless others whose names and stories we don’t know. But, as I sit with the weight of Andry’s story, I’m struck not just by the horror of what happened but by how easy a member of Congress—a House Democrat— could find Andry disposable.

Earlier this week, an anonymous House Democrat callously stated, “Rather than talking about the tariff policy and the economy ... the thing where his numbers are tanking, we're going to go take the bait for one hairdresser.” In that offhand remark is a craven thoughtlessness from someone who should know better. But this very attitude of apathy, ignorance, and casual cruelty is what has allowed hard-won progress to be unraveled and reversed.

The ease with which people rationalize the suffering of someone queer, brown, and foreign-born is appalling. To a sitting member of Congress, Andry became shorthand for distraction. “One hairdresser.” Not one human being. Not one asylum-seeker. Not one person whose rights have been violated. When the so-called opposition starts talking like the architects of cruelty, it becomes clear that the line between complicity and cowardice is razor-thin, and history has seen it before.

I am a young person trying to make sense of the cruelty and depravity of this moment—an era in which truth is twisted and justice is neglected. My ancestors fought to push this country toward progress, and so many before us had their lives taken because they were willing to die for something imperfect, understanding that it would lay the foundation for us to create something beyond their imagination.

What we’re living through feels unbearable, but this isn't a new story. Just a new chapter. The mechanisms might be updated, but the blueprint has been here all along. I started looking for details, and what I found was chilling in its familiarity.

In 1901, John Davis was on a rural road in Alabama, on his way to visit his dying wife, when he was seized by a constable—a local law enforcement officer with the authority to arrest and detain individuals. Davis hadn’t committed any crime. Instead, Davis was pulled into the brutal system of convict leasing, a post–Civil War invention that allowed Southern states to re-enslave Black men through fabricated charges and state-sanctioned labor deals with private companies. He never made it to his wife.

To me, John’s story felt disturbingly similar to Andry’s because this country has a pattern. The same systems once used to re-enslave Black men are now being used to disappear asylum-seekers. And when that system decides someone is inconvenient—too Black, too queer, too poor, too political—it doesn't protect them. It punishes them. And when that punishment is challenged, the system doesn’t apologize. It rejects and denies the evidence. Just like we’re seeing right now: a unanimous Supreme Court ruling demanding accountability, and an executive branch refusing to comply.

This is not just history echoing—it’s history evolving, adapting, and expanding its reach. If John and Andry show us what happens when the state decides your existence is inconvenient, then Yonas Fikre shows us what happens when you dare to refuse its terms.

A U.S. citizen living in Oregon, Yonas was approached by the FBI and asked to become an informant. When he declined, the government responded not with dialogue but with quiet retaliation. He was placed on the no-fly list without explanation, and, during a business trip abroad in 2011, he was arrested and detained in the United Arab Emirates. There, he was held for 106 days—beaten, isolated, and tortured. He was never charged with a crime. He never saw a courtroom. His disappearance was effectively a form of extraordinary rendition, a policy that outsources state violence to foreign governments when due process is inconvenient. What happened to Andry follows the same logic of extraordinary rendition: sending someone into foreign custody to face violence, without due process, as a way to dispose of a person without accountability.

To me, each of these stories is connected. Each happened with the quiet complicity of those who knew better but chose to say it wasn’t worth getting outraged about. I think that sentiment is wrong and unacceptable, especially from an elected official. These aren’t isolated incidents; they are a pattern of state violence. I believe in our collective power to call this what it is and demand better.

Andry doesn’t have time for indifference. We have to fight for him now.

Michael Franklin is the founder and chief thought leadership officer of Words Normalize Behavior, a speechwriting, executive communications, and coalition-building agency.

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