06/20/2026
carries the theme "Until Everyone Is Safe,” a slogan similar to ImmDef's which is . We defend immigrants like Andry Hernández Romero every step of the way so they never have to face our cruel immigration system alone. For the first time ever, that's meant standing by our client while he sought safety elsewhere. As a Venezuelan refugee, makeup artist, and LGBTQ+ asylum seeker, Andry followed every legal step to request protection in the U.S., only to be forcibly disappeared to El Salvador’s CECOT mega‑prison, where he endured months of abuse and while held incommunicado. Now he's taken the next step in his journey to seek asylum in Spain.
His case exposed a dangerous precedent that became a repeated tactic of the Trump administration: the systematic erosion of due process in immigration enforcement from the disappearances to the broad abuses in ICE’s detention to deportation pipeline. We warned that Andry’s case was a canary in the coal mine — a deliberate test to see how far this administration could stretch executive power, and how much erosion of rights the American public would tolerate.
After World War II the world came together to establish the 1951 Refugee Convention, a treaty defining who is a refugee and what protections they are owed. It enshrined the principle of non‑refoulement — that no refugee may be returned to a place where their life or freedom is at risk — precisely because governments had previously disappeared, expelled, or abandoned vulnerable people with catastrophic consequences. World Refugee Day reminds us of the individual and national obligation to defend refugees and asylum seekers until everyone is safe.
Learn more about Andry: freeandry.org
