'Legal black hole' Detained musician's family fearful

In a recording studio in central Santiago, where the father she has never met once sang, a four-month-old baby girl snuggles in her mother's arms, noise-cancelling earmuffs shielding her tiny ears from the sound.

- Tom Phillips

Nahiara Rubí Suárez Sánchez is equally oblivious to the plight of her father, a Venezuelan musician who is thought to be languishing in a maximum-security prison thousands of miles away in El Salvador after being swept up in Donald Trump's anti-migrant crusade.

Arturo Suárez Trejo, 33, is one of more than 200 Venezuelan men sent to the Central American country from the US, accused by Trump's administration - with no evidence - of being terrorists, rapists and gang members.

More than a month later, Suárez's relatives - who insist he is innocent - remain completely in the dark about his whereabouts, his wellbeing or how long he might be trapped behind bars.

"Right now I have no idea what's happening to him - I just ask God that he's OK," said Suárez's 27-year-old wife, a fellow Venezuelan called Nathali Sánchez, who lives with their child in Chile's capital.

"If something happens to my husband, I will hold Donald Trump and [El Salvador's president] Nayib Bukele responsible."

Critics have decried Trump's decision to banish asylum seekers and immigrants to a jail in an authoritarian foreign land as part of a disturbing democratic backslide in one of the world's largest democracies. "This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror," the historian and author Timothy Snyder recently warned.

For Suárez's loved ones, the policy represents an emotional sucker punch that follows years of hardship after they, like nearly 8 million Venezuelans, fled economic and political turmoil in their South American homeland.

"[It's] fucked up, man," said Denys Zambrano, a rapper known as Nyan who became one of Suárez's best friends in Santiago after they migrated there from different parts of Venezuela.