A former Milwaukee police officer with history of alleged drunk driving and lying signed the deportation warrant that sent a gay Venezuelan makeup artist to a hellish El Salvador prison.
Now employed as a private prison contractor, Charles Cross Jr. said Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, who sought asylum in the United States last year, was a member of the vicious Tren de Aragua gang, according to a bombshell new report by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Cross, despite being given the power to have the final word on Romero’s fate, was once put on a list of cops allegedly known to lie and break the law by Milwaukee prosecutors.
His presence on what is known as the Brady List essentially was a reminder that he shouldn’t be allowed to testify for the state during trials due to his credibility issues.
Cross, 62, was then fired as a Milwaukee Police Sergeant in 2012 after he allegedly drove his car into a family’s home while intoxicated. He appealed the decision but was still forced to resign, the Sentinel reported.
Even still, Cross was also being investigated at the time for getting overtime pay for hours he allegedly hadn’t worked.
Despite his tainted record, he was able to get a job four months after his drunk driving citation at CoreCivic, a company that manages private prisons and also operates many of the immigration detention centers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
According to court records, Cross was the one who signed his name over the title ‘INVESTIGATOR’ on the form that implicated Romero, who has denied any connection to the gang that got its start in a Venezuelan prison.
Cross is just one of the private prison contractors assisting in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort.
Trump’s goal is to root out undercover operatives of Tren de Aragua and MS-13, the Salvadoran gang behind an array of murders and sex trafficking crimes.
John Sandweg, former ICE acting director under the Obama administration, told the Sentinel it raises ‘serious concerns’ that private contractors are being trusted to identify members of these gangs rather than federal agents.
For Romero, this has meant getting sent on a plane to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison on March 13 along with 237 other migrants.
The Center for Terrorism Confinement, as its called, keeps 80 prisoners in one cramped cell for 23-and-a-half hours a day, CNN reported.
The makeup artist and hairdresser was reportedly trying to claim asylum to avoid crackdowns in Venezuela by Nicolas Maduro, the country’s leader, who is widely accused of stealing the July 2024 election to illegally continue his reign.
Concerned that he would persecuted as a gay man, Romero left his family behind in May and initially tried to cross into the US illegally. He was returned to Mexico by US Border Patrol agents.
On August 29, he made it to the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego after making an appointment on CBP One, an app pioneered under the Biden administration to streamline asylum claims that Trump later shut down.
After initially passing preliminary asylum screening, border patrol agents began to fixate on his tattoos, including a crown on either wrist, next to the words ‘Dad’ and ‘Mom.’
They claimed Hernandez’s crown tattoos were ‘consistent’ with those adopted by members of Tren de Aragua, which they used as a pretense to detain him for months.
Once he was locked away at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, another CoreCivic employee, Arturo Torres, questioned him about his tattoos.
A point-based rubric sheet dated December 10, 2024, showed that Romero was evaluated as a possible member of a gang, though the only category he got points on was ‘STG Tattoos/Brands/Identifying Marks.’
Torres did not indicate that Romero had any contraband or that he any contact with known gang members. They didn’t have evidence he was photographed with gang members or had had correspondence with them.
‘Upon conducting a review of detainee Hernandez’s tattoos it was found that detainee Hernandez has a crown on each one of his wrist,’ the form states. ‘The crown has been found to be an identifier for a Tren de Aragua gang member.’
Torres signed his name in the ‘completed by’ section, and Cross signed his name in the ‘confirmed by’ section.
Ryan Gustin, a CoreCivic spokesman, declined to comment specifically on Cross’s case but offered a statement that all employees ‘clear a rigorous, federal background clearance process’ and must be approved by ICE before working at an ICE-contracted facility.
DailyMail.com approached CoreCivic for additional comment on what level of experience Cross may have had in identifying members of gangs.
Romero’s lawyer, Paulina Reyes, described her client’s tattoos in court filings as derived from his upbringing in his hometown of Capacho, famed for its ‘Three Kings Day’ celebration.
Romero worked at a state-run television station but said he was constantly discriminated against for his sexuality and political views, according to an affidavit.
He quit the TV job and fled to the US, where he thought he’d be safer. Now, his parents haven’t heard from him since he was taken to the CECOT prison in El Salvador last month.
The development in Romero’s case comes as the Trump administration was ordered by the Supreme Court to bring back another man who was sent to the same prison, Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland.
The unsigned decision issued Thursday instructed the government to ‘facilitate’ the 29-year-old father’s return.
Abrego Garcia was said to have been in MS-13, an allegation his lawyers say is based on accusation from a from a confidential informant. The informant said he was a member of the gang in New York, despite Abrego Garcia having never lived there.
Federal judge Paula Xinis, the one who first ordered the Trump administration to return Abrego Garcia back, described the accusations as vague’ and ‘uncorroborated.’
Lawyers for the Department of Justice admitted in court filings that he was deported due to an ‘administrative error’ but have argued that there is nothing officials can do to get him back as he is on foreign soil.
As of now, the White House has not complied with an order from Xinis that said it needed to provide her a plan of how Abrego Garcia will be retrieved by Friday morning.
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