A Monday night segment on Fox News’The Five devolved into mockery and dismissiveness as panelists ridiculed agay Venezuelan asylum-seeker who was deported without due process and is now imprisoned in one of the most notorious prisons in the Western Hemisphere — despite acknowledging he is innocent.
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Jessica Tarlov, the show’s sole liberal co-host, attempted to explain the Trump administration’s newly implemented eight-point deportation assessment, which allows a person to be designated as a gang member and deported based in part on their tattoos. She cited the case of Andrys, a 23-year-old gay makeup artist from Venezuela with a crown tattoo reading “Mom,” which was reportedly enough to classify him as a suspected gang member under the policy.
Related: Gay Venezuelan asylum-seeker ‘disappeared’ to Salvadoran mega-prison under Trump order, Maddow reveals
“That guy had a crown tattoo because he got matching tattoos with his ex-girlfriend,” Tarlov said. “Those people have been sent to this El Salvadorian prison camp.”
Greg Gutfeld replied, “The lesson: Do not get matching tattoos with your girlfriend.”
Tarlov, unfazed, continued: “I’m not very pro-ink. But you can’t take away people’s due process like that. And again, I don’t trust the El Salvadorian government to be making sure that they’re not torturing people… They need to be vetted on this side.”
When Jeanine Pirro, a former judge, mockingly asked, “They’re torturing them?” Tarlov shot back, referencing a recent Time magazine report: “Did you watch the video? Time magazine was there when the gay barber from Venezuela who had a crown tattoo that said ‘Mom’ was being processed coming into El Salvador.”
The Time report by journalist Philip Holsinger, who was on the ground in El Salvador on March 15 as deportation flights arrived, provides chilling insight. According to Holsinger, detainees were immediately surrounded by an “ocean of soldiers and police,” and “the transfer from the plane to the buses that would carry them to prison was rapid, yet it might as well have been the crossing of an ancient continent.”
One young man sobbed as he was thrown to the ground, telling guards, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.” Holsinger wrote, “I believed him.”
Detainees were slapped, shoved, and humiliated as they were forcibly shaved, stripped of their clothing, and marched into cold, overcrowded cells with no communication with the outside world. “For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at,” Holsinger wrote. “It was exile to another world… a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten.”
That same day, a federal judge had issued an emergency order halting deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a wartime-era law the Trump administration invoked to remove Venezuelans alleged to be affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang, now designated a foreign terrorist organization. Despite that order, planes continued landing in El Salvador with deportees aboard.
NPRreported that a panel of judges from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on March 26 that the deportations must remain paused, siding with District Court Judge James Boasberg. In a concurring opinion, Judge Patricia Millett wrote, “The government’s removal scheme denies Plaintiffs even a gossamer thread of due process… zero process—to show that they are not members of the gang, to contest their eligibility for removal under the law, or to invoke legal protections against being sent to a place where it appears likely they will be tortured and their lives endangered.”
Nonetheless, the White House has vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that blocking the deportations undermines national security and foreign policy. One Trump-appointed judge dissented, claiming the court was interfering in sensitive diplomacy.
Back on The Five, noted Fox News homophobe Jesse Watters dismissed Tarlov’s concern: “You’ve been talking about this gay barber from El Salvador with some stupid tattoo for weeks. Jessica, come on. It’s just a gay barber.”
“He’s not into you,” Gutfeld remarked.
Watters then admitted Andrys was “an innocent guy who got swept up in a deportation” but brushed it off as commonplace. “A lot of people in this country, Jessica, get arrested for things that they didn’t do… That doesn’t mean you just stop arresting people… You just try to do it better the next time.”
“I have nothing against the gay barbers,” Watters added as he geared up to make a dismissive joke.“Gay barbers usually give the best haircuts. So we should bring them back just for that.”
The ridicule aired just as new court documents revealed the Trump administration admitted to mistakenly deporting a Maryland father, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to El Salvador — despite a 2019 immigration court ruling barring his removal to the country due to credible threats to his life. CNN reported that Abrego Garcia was placed on a deportation flight “by administrative error” and is now detained in the same mega-prison, CECOT.
The Department of Homeland Security argued in court that it cannot bring Abrego Garcia back because he’s in Salvadoran custody. A spokesperson claimed he was a gang member — but provided no evidence when pressed by CNN.
“This has been a nightmare for my family,” wrote his wife, a U.S. citizen, in a sworn affidavit. Their son, who has autism, cries and clings to his father’s clothing since the disappearance.
Andrys and Abrego Garcia are two of at least 238 men deported to CECOT under President Trump’s March executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act — a rarely used wartime law from 1798. A federal court issued an emergency order halting the deportations on March 15, but the Trump administration continued at least three flights that day.
As The Advocate reported, Andrys's deportation happened despite a federal judge’s emergency order halting removals. ICE failed to present him for a scheduled immigration hearing and now says it will not assist in facilitating communication with him because he has been “removed.”
"Just give people their due process," Tarlov said.
