Fox News regularly downplayed concerns that the Trump administration’s denial of due process had resulted in immigrants sent in error to a notorious foreign prison, with one host mocking interest in the plight of a man he described as “just a gay barber.” That man, Andry Hernández Romero, said last week that he was beaten by guards, one of whom forced him to perform oral sex, during his 125 days in captivity.

Fox personalities were elated in March when the Trump administration dubiously invoked a rarely utilized wartime authority to deport over 250 Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a megaprison known for its brutal conditions. The network had spent 2024 concocting a bogus narrative about a “migrant crime wave,” and they quickly and uncritically adopted the administration’s justification that it had targeted violent Tren de Aragua gang members for this treatment.

While Fox’s stable of propagandists bleated that the deportees were “the worst of the worst,” CBS News reviewed the names and found that three-quarters had no criminal record in the United States. Indeed, the group included people like Hernández, a gay 32-year-old makeup artist who entered the U.S. legally and passed a preliminary asylum screening. He had no criminal record or removal order but was detained and ultimately shipped to El Salvador over concerns about his wrist tattoos — crowns with the words “Mom” and “Dad” next to them.

Rather than express concerns over the U.S. government using such slight evidence to send people to a foreign prison known for its brutal conditions, Fox hosts ran cover for the administration. They accused critics of sympathizing with “illegal alien gangbangers,” accused them of pushing “false sob stories,” denounced news outlets that “only focused on” the innocent people sent to the torture prison rather than the supposedly guilty ones, and denied the importance of providing due process to determine which group is which.

Fox’s Jesse Watters on Andry Hernández: “It’s just a gay barber”

Perhaps the most disturbing discussion came during the March 31 edition of The Five, when Jessica Tarlov, the panel show’s lone Democrat, drew derision from right-wing co-hosts Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld for repeatedly directing the show’s attention to Hernández’s plight. 

“Time magazine was there when the gay barber from Venezuela who had a crown tattoo that said ‘mom’ was being processed coming into the El Salvadoran — oh, am I boring you again?” Tarlov said at one point. “I'm sorry.”

“No,” Watters replied. “But you've been talking about this gay barber from El Salvador with some stupid tattoo for weeks. Weeks, Jessica.”

“It's just a gay barber,” Watters added. 

“He’s not into you,” Gutfeld interjected.

“He's an innocent guy who got swept up in a deportation, and hopefully we get it figured out and straightened out,” Watters continued. “But a lot of people in this country, Jessica, get arrested for things that they didn't do, get falsely accused, falsely convicted.”

“That doesn't mean you stop arresting criminals because one guy was arrested who was innocent,” Watters concluded. “It just means you just try to do it better the next time.”

What we did to Andry Hernández

Four months after that segment, the Trump administration managed to have Hernández returned to Venezuela as part of a prisoner exchange. Unfortunately, the administration didn’t “get it figured out and straightened out” before he was brutalized by guards, one of whom forced his penis into Hernández’s mouth and made him perform oral sex, Hernández subsequently told interviewers. 

“Hernandez says the prison was hot and quiet. Guards would drag inmates out of their cells and beat them if they made too much noise,” NPR’s Manuel Rueda reported on July 27. “He slept on a metal plank without a mattress and shared his cell with up to 19 people. There was a toilet in each cell but no walls to separate it from the rest of the room.”

Rueda further reported that, according to Hernández, he was punished with confinement in a smaller cell “after guards caught him bathing outside regulatory hours. He says he was beaten with batons by three wardens in the small room and forced to perform oral sex on one of the guards.”

“In that prison, human rights don't exist, and the guards take pleasure out of seeing others suffer.” Rueda translated Hernández saying.

NBC News likewise reported on July 28 that Hernández said that “one day during his imprisonment he was taken to solitary confinement, where prison staff ‘made me kneel, perform oral sex on one person, while the others groped me and touched my private parts’ and ‘stroked me with their batons.’”

Fox has not reported on Hernández’s account, according to a Media Matters review. 

And while Watters had expressed his vague hope for Hernández that “we get it figured out,” The Five is instead focused on issues he apparently finds more important.