CECOT and the Unquelled Cry of the Innocent: How Trump’s Deportations Betray Ethics From Socrates to Blackstone

The journey of more than two hundred men including Andry Hernández Romero into the luminous Salvadoran dungeon known as CECOT

The unquelled cry of the innocent, even amidst overwhelming displays of authoritarian force, reminds us that truth and the human striving for justice is indomitable.

Part four in a four-part series examining the Trump administration’s violation of logical, legal, and ethical principles in unilaterally deporting hundreds of men to a Salvadoran maximum security prison. Part one, part two, and part three.

On March 16, 2025, helmeted Salvadoran officers herded hundreds of shackled men from U.S. planes to busses that would ferry men to El Salvador’s luminous dungeon known as CECOT. The armed and armored police rushed the bewildered men wearing normal clothes and appeared as though they’d been plucked from the street with forceful, invented urgency. On the buses, prison guards taught the men that any exercise of autonomy including the turning of one’s head to look out a window, would be treated as a punishable infraction. These are the men President Donald Trump has insisted are “monsters,” “terrorists,” and violent “gang members.”

Amidst the choreographed spectacle of control and enforced silence, one man’s dissenting cry of innocence pierced the dull dictatorial cadence of uniformed men obeying orders and prodding their brethren like cattle. Those cries found photojournalist Philip Holsinger, who was on the ground documenting the men’s midnight arrival and transfer from the U.S. government to Salvadoran forces. Holsinger bore witness as the emotional man viscerally declared his innocence even as police escorts violently reprimanded him. “He was being slapped every time he would speak up,” said Holsinger, “but he just—like he couldn’t help himself.” Speaking in Spanish, the man said he was not a gang member, he was an innocent gay man. “Yo soy gay,” Holsinger heard him say.

Hoslinger’s photo capturing the head shaving of a praying man on March 16, 2025 in El Salvador. The man would later be identified as Andry Hernández Romero.

The man’s pleas of innocence found no affirmation and stirred no response from the intellectually docile men determined to bind his liberty and dictate his fate. So he called out to higher, more human powers. Holsinger said “he started praying and calling out, literally crying for his mother.” And though the man may have felt his cries of innocence went inhumanly ignored, those cries penetrated Holsinger. He and his camera followed the man from the plane, documenting his denigrating transformation into a CECOT prisoner. A process that forced the new inmates to discard their individual identity. After having their heads shaved, the men were forced to strip off all clothes before gun wielding men and putting on the white shorts and shirt of CECOT prisoners.

A screenshot of a photo by Holsinger featured in 60 Minutes expose on the men transferred to CECOT. The photo helped identify Hernández as one of the men taken to CECOT.

Through Holsinger’s photos, journalists were later able to identify the man beseeching man, mother, and God to honor his innocence as 31 year-old Andry Hernández Romero. Hernández is a makeup artist and hairdresser from Venezuela who came to the United States seeking asylum. He entered the U.S. through a prearranged asylum appointment in San Diego and told immigration officials he was fleeing Venezuela due to his political opposition to the current government and because of the repression he experienced due to his sexual orientation.

Andry José Hernández Romero participating in Capacho’s Three Kings celebration. The Guardian.

President Trump continues to insist that the 261 men he sent to El Salvador on March 16, 2025 are “the most violent alien enemies of the World and… the United States.” They are “barbarians,” he said in April 2025 ahead of Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele’s scheduled visit to Washington, D.C.. When pressed for evidence of this designation, the Trump administration has resorted to fallacious appeals and a fact-free metric of determining gang membership based on generic tattoos and mass produced apparel featuring the Chicago Bulls and Michal Jordan Jumpman logo.

From ‘Jumpman’ to Jumpsuits: The Symbolic 'Crimes' Landing Hundreds in a Notorious Salvadoran Prison

Like so many others, Hernández’s tattoos were used to determine his membership of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua (TDA). The tattoos of crowns on his forearms were deemed “consistent with those of a Tren de Aragua member,” according to an immigration agent at California's Otay Mesa detention center. The Guardian reported that Hernández had tattooed the crowns on his wrists as an acknowledgment of his Catholic roots and to memorialize the annual Three Kings Day celebrations that his hometown, Capacho, Venezuela, is so well known for.

On the left, Hernández's crown tattoos allegedly indicative of his gang membership. On the right, Hernández poses with a crown. His family and friends say he loved costumes and pageantry.

Andry's story exposes the cruelty of blanket deportations. Share his story.

Hernández’s abusive treatment by Salvadoran police exemplify what pioneering psychologist, Erich Fromm, identified as a salient characteristic of the authoritarian personality. While, people and systems of humane spirit respond to suffering with empathy and concern, authoritarians are aroused by fear, helplessness, and control. In his 1941 analysis of fascism, Escape from Freedom, Fromm explained that powerlessness, repulses the authoritarian personality. “Whereas a different kind of character is appalled by the idea of attacking one who is helpless, the authoritarian character feels the more aroused the more helpless his object has become.”

Evidence that some are aroused at others’ suffering is disturbingly abundant. A perusal of social media comments on the plight of the men deported to CECOT reveal surprising numbers of people not only praising the Trump administration’s denial of due process but reveling in the suffering they imagine men are enduring. One comment left on a Facebook post pertaining to Hernández’s plight read, “He's busy getting stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey, he feels right at home.”

The martial pageantry of the transfer of detainees from U.S. to Salvadoran custody and the forceful suppression of head-turning and innocence pleading offer lessons in authoritarian “ethics.” The desperate and irrational justifications for condemning men like Hernández to such undeserved violation further teaches not only the fallacies of authoritarianism but also its betrayal of timeless principles including the wrongness of presuming guilt and reciprocating wrong for wrong.

Centuries of ethical wisdom reduced to dust: Trump’s policy declares it better that ten innocent suffer than one guilty escape.

Fallacies and Fear for Scapegoating

When the Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan was asked to explain the government's denial of due process for the men sent to El Salvador, Homan replied, “Due process? Where was Laken Riley's due process? Where were all these young women that were killed and raped by members of TDA? Where was their due process?” Laken Riley was a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student who, in 2024, was murdered in Athens, Georgia, by a Venezuelan man who entered the U.S. illegally.

“Where was Laken Riley’s due process?” — the Trump administration’s grotesque equivocation between an individual act of murder and state-sponsored deportation.

Homan’s interjection of Riley’s circumstances when asked about the 261 men disappeared to a dystopian Salvadoran prison is flagrantly fallacious. Laken Riley was the victim of the morally repugnant crime of murder. Humane and emotionally sensitive people are all pained by the murder of an innocent and unsuspecting person whatever her name or age. But moral concern, in this instance, is weaponized against rational inquiry.

In bringing up Riley, Homan changed the subject and did so with an emotional smokescreen that obscures legitimate questions about the government’s denial of the men’s basic right to hear and respond to any charges brought against them; accusations that led the government to condemn them to confinement in a prison noted for its dehumanizing conditions.

This is how authoritarianism spreads: not with one blow, but a thousand small violations of justice. Like and share this work—and if you’re new here, subscribe.

More than changing the subject, Homan followed President Trump in magnifying risks and appealing to people’s primal fear of death. The men sent to CECOT were “monsters” and “terrorists,” people who, if given the benefit of the doubt—or due process!—might well make victims of their daughters, another Laken Riley, we are told in so many words. And nothing overcomes our capacity for reasoned thought better than stimulating our fear for our lives and those we love.

Courageous critical thinkers discover that homicides, as world-destroying as they are for each victim and their families, are less common today than they were in the 1990s. In recent years, the U.S. homicide rate has been 7.5 per 100,000 people (2022) and 5.7 per 100,000 (2023). In 1990, 9.4 people per 100,000 died from murder. In 2023, fewer than 20,000 people died from homicide. And just as the homicide rates have fallen, the portion of the foreign born U.S. population has grown. In 1990, immigrants made up 7.9% of the population. In 2023, that portion grew to 14.3%. Thus, the emphasis on deporting illegal immigrants as a primary means of remedying violent crime is proven misplaced.

Murder is not among the leading threats to the lives of ordinary Americans. More than twice as many people died from suicide in 2023 than did from homicide. Americans are more than twice as likely to die due to a lack of healthcare than someone killing them. A 2009 study determined, more than 49,000 people died in 2005 from a lack of health insurance.¹ Meanwhile, the leading causes of death in the United States continue to be heart disease—killing nearly 700,000 every year—and cancer—killing more than 600,000. The decision to prioritize remedying death via homicide over death via suicide, lack of healthcare, or heart disease or cancer is not a simple factual calculation. It is a value-based decision and, perhaps most importantly, it is a political calculation.

Why figures like President Trump would rather emphasize death by murder over death by poverty or poor health may well have been most clearly addressed by the great American novelist and social critic, Mark Twain who said,² in an 1886 address before the Knights of Labor and the multicultural labor rights’ movement they helped stimulate, that the use of might by the few is intended to divide the oppressed:

“Who are the oppressed? The many: The nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that MAKE the bread that the soft-handed and the idle eat.”

Twain argued that the oppression of the many would only be undone when they joined together across their differences to form an unyielding block against the “oppressors.” Anticipating the next question, Twain wrote,

“Who are the oppressors? The few: the king, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents.”

Better the Guilty Go Free than the Innocent be Punished, an Ancient Principle

In his reply to a legitimate question about due process, Homan attempted to analogize the denial of Venezuelan nationals’ opportunity to defend themselves against the state’s accusations of wrongdoing and the denial of Riley’s right to life. But the two situations are not comparable. The U.S. government is responsible for denying the Venezuelan nationals due process rights. The wrong endured by Riley was due to a repugnant act of murderous violence on the part of a single individual. And that individual was held accountable for his crime.

The question Homan avoided pertained to the due process of those accused of being members of a gang and disappeared to a maximum security prison. Riley’s life is no more or less valuable than the lives of Andry Hernández Romero, Jerce Reyes Barrios, Alirio Guillermo Belloso Fuenmayo, or Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And no amount of pain and coerced penance, wrought from the wrongfully deported, will undo the wrong done to a single individual such as Riley.

Those who genuinely respect innocence not only decry Riley’s murder but also the denial of due process to the accused. It is those like Homan who betray and condemn the innocent by denying their ancient right to defend themselves against such accusations.

Authoritarianism is the dully, vacant exaltation of the emptiest of all forms of power: the power of control over others.

The legal presumption of innocence is a core ethical principle at the heart of any just and non-authoritarian legal system. This principle was affirmed as a bedrock principle of U.S. law in the 1895 Supreme Court case, Coffin v. United States. In a ruling signed by all eight of the Justices, we read

“The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.”

The Justices note that the origins of this principle are ancient, referencing a book 48 of a compendium of Roman law compiled in 530-533 CE called the Digest or the Pandect.³ That text states that the Roman emperor, Trajan (53-117 CE), insisted it was wrong to convict people purely off of suspicion of criminal wrongdoing. According to the text, Trajan believed:

“It is better to permit the crime of a guilty person to go unpunished than to condemn one who is innocent.”⁴

This idea is often described as “Blackstone's ratio,” a reference to the contention of English jurist William Blackstone conclusion that “the law holds that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”⁵ And the American Benjamin Franklin more forcefully expressed the rightness of presuming innocence in a 1785 letter.

“That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape, than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long & generally approv’d, never that I know of controverted.”

Refusing the Two Wrongs Make a Right Fallacy

According to Homan, we have no business asking about the due process of the men sent to CECOT when young women like Laken Riley were so mercilessly murdered. The implication, it seems, is that since Riley was denied her basic right to life, so, too, should these men be denied their basic rights.

That we adults are capable of committing such vivid errors in reasoning is a reminder of just how easy it is to be wrong and how difficult it is to consistently think critically. Tethered to intellectual humility, we may coolly recall that just because someone else misbehaves or commits a wrongful act does not entitle us to do the same. This is a lesson most of us learn as children but some of us forget as we age.

“From Socrates to Jesus, ethical traditions agree: answering injustice with injustice is a betrayal of our fullest humanity. Trump’s deportations betray this truth.”

Beneath the moral and logical obstinacy that sometimes comes with age, we know two wrongs do not make a right. If everyone succumbed to such a “logic,” we would not only violate our most cherished values—like the protection of the innocent against false accusations—we would also generate a world of mayhem.

The great spiritual and philosophical traditions of the world consistently teach us that responding to injustice with injustice simply perpetuates wrong and undermines our humanity. In Plato’s Crito (399 BCE), Socrates states, “Nor must one, when wronged, inflict wrong in return, as the majority believe, since one must never do wrong” (49c). Rather than reciprocating wrong for wrong, we are to hold ourselves to the standard of excellence, even as others fall short.

To more fully make the point, the great thinkers of the world have not only instructed us not to follow the model of the badly behaved but also to treat justly those who have treated us badly. Socrates, in Crito, states, “One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him…..” (44, 49d). Some years later, a prophet named Jesus declared loving one’s enemies the central requirement of his followers:

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

Not only is it irrational and unethical to do wrong because others have done wrong, but it is also fundamentally wrong to treat badly those who have treated us badly, say Socrates and Jesus. A policy of sending people—even if they are members of a violent gang—to another nation’s prison system known for rampant abuses would be deemed wrong by such an ethic of love.

The cruel ceremonies of dominance on display on March 15, 2025, were ethical-spiritual expressions of necrophiliac power and its indifference—perhaps its delight in—suffering.

The Impotence of Authoritarianism

Though devotees of dominance stand ready with rationalizations, they know the ancient dictate to love one’s enemies and have at least cursory knowledge of alternative prison models such as Norway’s humane maximum security facility, Halden Prison. They simply do not believe in the love of humanity. Their cruel ceremonies of dominance and dehumanization are more than functional, they are ethical-spiritual expressions of authoritarian or necrophiliac power: the love of force and dominance over and above the love of life, liberty, reason, and innocence.

Authoritarianism is a lack of reason, compassion, integrity, and faith in humanity. It is the dully, vacant exaltation of the emptiest of all forms of power: the power of psychological manipulation, physical dominance, and control of others. Authoritarian power is a naked appeal to force and fear rather than reason and love. Authoritarianism’s devotees enjoy the direct and vicarious pleasures of self-aggrandizing assertion over and against others.

People attracted to authoritarianism—to join or worship it—seek the vicarious experience of power to overcome feelings of personal and social impotence. They wish to at least fleetingly cope with the inability to creatively transform themselves and their world. They are lured away from the prophets’ table which serves a vision of power comprised of reason, love, struggle, and solidarity. Authoritarianism’s devotees join the demagogues’ banquet, believing the ancient lie that the hunger of impotence is satiated by three-course feast of fear, force, and dehumanization of the subhuman other.

But dominance quenches the human thirst for transcendence the same as seawater quenches thirst. The fleeting sense of control over the world is quickly replaced by a more acute feeling of impotence. The manipulative control over others is tenuous and perilous, a constant reminder that authoritarian influence is superficial and won through cheap tricks. According to Fromm, the resort to dominance “is the perversion of potency,” exemplifying the opposite of what it postures itself to be. Those drawn to authoritarianism seek to fill the gaps in their humanity with cheap spectacles of braggadocio. The expression of authentic power is more clearly witnessed in Hernández’s faithfulness to truth and integrity.

Genuine human potency is exemplified by humility, inner competency, awareness, and love for life. To be potent, Fromm explained, indicates we are able to realize our “potentialities on the basis of freedom and integrity of [our] self.” The conception of power-as-creative-relatedness runs counter to common sense understandings. Yet it has the endorsement of many great thinkers throughout human history. The Buddha, for example, encouraged his followers to concentrate on self-mastery in place of “victory” over others. “Self-conquest is far better than the conquest of others,” we read in The Dhammapada (after 400 BCE). “Not even a god, an angel, Mara or Brahma can turn into defeat the victory of a person who is self-subdued and ever restrained in conduct.”

We can only imagine the terror men like Hernández felt in being bound and brutally delivered to El Salvador’s militarized police by the Trump administration. Yet his indignation and will to live—perhaps also his faith—penetrated the violent authoritarian imposition of silence. With the voice of humanity and the love of life he plead his innocence: I am innocent! I am innocent! I am innocent! The declaration of innocence from a human being condemned for crimes never committed haunt the conscience more than any ghost.

The condemnation of the innocent both haunt us and destroy the fabric of society that maintains adherence to just law. Before becoming the United States’ second president, John Adams warned that more harm was done in persecuting the innocent than permitting the guilty to go free. In a December 1770 legal defense, Adams observed, that we would never be able to punish all crimes. Society could survive such a state of affairs. What we could not survive, Adams argued, was for innocent men to realize virtue was no more rewarded than vice.

“But when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, it is immaterial to me, whether I behave well or ill; for virtue itself, is no security. And if such a sentiment as this, should take place in the mind of the subject, there would be an end to all security what so ever.”⁶

Hernández’s words haunt us, stirring empathy for his plight and revulsion at the violation of his humanity. It is this indomitable disgust for coercion—this visceral revolt against dehumanization—that condemns authoritarian power to perpetual insecurity.

If this piece left you with more fury than hope, transform it. Contact your elected officials to educate them on the issue and tell them where you stand. Sample script below. Silence is the ally of injustice. Speak.

“I’m calling to demand oversight into the Trump administration’s deportation of migrant, residents, and asylum seekers to El Salvador’s CECOT prison. According to a 60-Minutes report, just 5% of these men had violent criminal records, yet all were denied due process based on tattoos and popular clothing. The U.S. must not outsource human rights abuses. I urge [Rep/Senator] to 1) Investigate these deportations, 2) provide legal council to detainees, and 3) end funding to CECOT.”

If you made it this far, you’re part of the humanistic revolt. Chose your next move.
1️⃣ Tap ❤️ 2️⃣ Comment 3️⃣ Share 4️⃣ Subscribe (free) 5️⃣ Support: upgrade to a paid subscription or leave a tip

1. Steffie Woolhandler et al., “Health Insurance and Mortality in US Adults,” American Journal of Public Health 99, no. 12 (December 2009): 2289–95, accessed April 12, 2025. For state-by-state data on deaths due to lack of insurance, see.

2. Mark Twain, “The New Dynasty,” March 22, 1886, in Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays 1852–1890 (New York: Library of America, 1992), 883–890.

3. The project was organized by Byzantine emperor Justinian I.

4. See Title 19, “Concerning punishments,” No. 5, “Ulpianus, On the Duties of Proconsul, Book VII.”

5. This statement is found in book IV of his 18th century work, Commentaries on the Laws of England.

6. Adams’ complete statement:

“We are to look upon it as more beneficial, that many guilty persons should escape unpunished, that one innocent person should suffer. The reason is, because it's of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished.... But when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, it is immaterial to me, whether I behave well or ill; for virtue itself, is no security. And if such a sentiment as this, should take place in the mind of the subject, there would be an end to all security what so ever.”

Also note that the French Enlightenment thinker, Voltaire, affirms this principle in his work, Zadig (1747). In chapter VI of the book, we read that Zadig believed “the Nations round about were indebted for that generous Maxim; that ’tis much more Prudence to acquit two Persons, tho’ actually guilty, than to pass Sentence of Condemnation in one that is virtuous and innocent.”