Eyvin Hernadez is pictured during a trip to Cancun, Mexico, in 2018. He is being “wrongfully detained” in Venezuela, according to the U.S. State Department.
“I want to write a book. I want to share stories that connect with real people.”
Those were some of the last texts I got from my friend Eyvin Hernandez before he was taken prisoner in Venezuela on March 31.
For nearly seven months, Eyvin, a tireless public defender in Los Angeles County, has been imprisoned, reduced to a bargaining chip by a rogue government. He is the only known U.S. citizen to officially be designated as “wrongfully detained” in Venezuela by the U.S. Department of State since a major prisoner swap freed seven Americans earlier this month. Eyvin faces up to 16 years in prison in a country notorious for its human rights abuses.
The Biden administration needs to bring him home now.
In March, Eyvin was on vacation in Colombia with a friend when he accompanied her to the Venezuelan border to get her passport stamped. It was there that they came across a group that demanded cash. According to Eyvin’s brother, Henry Martinez, once they realized he was American, the group “basically kidnapped him.”
At the time, Eyvin was told the investigation was supposed to take 45 days. Instead, he has been held for months. In a phone call with Henry, Eyvin shared the horrors he is currently enduring. “There are no windows. There’s nothing. I mean, we’re basically in a garage being held in a cell, a cage,” he said.
It’s the same kind of cell that drove other wrongfully detained Americans in Venezuela before him, like Matthew Heath, to attempt suicide. The U.N. has called the country’s prisons, “beyond monstrous,” and many detainees, also held on fabricated charges, return to their families as shells of their former selves — if they’re lucky enough to get out.
Those who know Eyvin well know him as a quiet leader. He is economical with his words and soft-spoken. But you would always feel his presence. That mild-mannered, cerebral man is the person I first encountered 20 years ago as a fellow law student in Los Angeles. We were from opposite sides of the country, and our parents emigrated from different parts of the world — his from El Salvador, mine from Egypt and Lebanon. But as first-generation college graduates, from kindred working-class backgrounds, we instantly became friends, sharing a passion for everything from social justice and critical race theory to travel and boxing. During the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, when Islamophobia descended on campus and the entire world around it, Eyvin would consistently check in on me. “If you need anything let me know,” he would text, usually followed by a joke like, “you’re an honorary Latino now,” to console me.
During those days, Eyvin became my brother and new family in a foreign city as we both struggled with navigating the unfamiliar terrain of an elite law school as a child of refugees. Our common origin stories paved professional pathways rooted in helping vulnerable populations: I became an academic and writer, and Eyvin emerged into a tireless public defender helping the most marginalized clients in the heart of his community.
Now, that public defender, who has dedicated his life to indigent clients, is in dire need of our help.
The case of Brittney Griner, the famous basketball player imprisoned in Russia, brought the plight of political prisoners into the American consciousness. Today, Eyvin’s portrait stands alongside Griner’s in a mural commemorating a string of political prisoners in Washington, D.C., miles away from the White House — the place that houses the final hope for a man languishing between bars and borrowed time.
“I’m carrying the weight of making these decisions,” Henry told me during a phone call. “Raising visibility could anger the (Venezuelan) government. But what choice do we have? Eyvin knows the risks and wants us to take action.”
Knowing Eyvin, that makes sense. He has always preferred action over words. Someone who fearlessly backpacked through South America alone, wore a Che Guevara tattoo on his arm and joined me on spontaneous trips to Costa Rica and Mexico. In the months since Eyvin’s incarceration, Henry has served as his principal mouthpiece on the ground, mobilizing an action group composed of his former classmates, colleagues and friends to raise awareness and lobby the Biden administration. “Bring Eyvin Home” has been morphed into hashtags and T-shirts, seeking to enlist public support and push elected officials — including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Gov. Gavin Newsom — to prioritize his case.
Eyvin’s presence in my life has been more prominent despite his physical absence. Nightmares of my own family members locked away in Lebanese and Egyptian prisons by authoritarian actors of a different breed haunt me, while stories of captives being tortured and driven to suicide reel across my mind as I scroll through old texts from him.
Eyvin’s words, whether spoken or written, always carried great weight. I hope the world, one day, will be able to read his words and the unwritten book that awaits his freedom.
Khaled A. Beydoun is an author, an associate professor of law and the associate director of civil rights and social justice at the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University.
An American lawyer has been locked up in Venezuela on bogus charges. Biden needs to bring him home
Eyvin Hernadez is pictured during a trip to Cancun, Mexico, in 2018. He is being “wrongfully detained” in Venezuela, according to the U.S. State Department.
“I want to write a book. I want to share stories that connect with real people.”
Those were some of the last texts I got from my friend Eyvin Hernandez before he was taken prisoner in Venezuela on March 31.
For nearly seven months, Eyvin, a tireless public defender in Los Angeles County, has been imprisoned, reduced to a bargaining chip by a rogue government. He is the only known U.S. citizen to officially be designated as “wrongfully detained” in Venezuela by the U.S. Department of State since a major prisoner swap freed seven Americans earlier this month. Eyvin faces up to 16 years in prison in a country notorious for its human rights abuses.
The Biden administration needs to bring him home now.
In March, Eyvin was on vacation in Colombia with a friend when he accompanied her to the Venezuelan border to get her passport stamped. It was there that they came across a group that demanded cash. According to Eyvin’s brother, Henry Martinez, once they realized he was American, the group “basically kidnapped him.”
At the time, Eyvin was told the investigation was supposed to take 45 days. Instead, he has been held for months. In........
© San Francisco Chronicle
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Yara Hawari
Patrick Gathara
Andrew Mitrovica
Marwan Bishara
Hipolitus Wangge
Tafi Mhaka
Julie Bindel
Jan Egeland
Fisayo Soyombo
