Venezuela’s toppled leader, Nicolás Maduro, was in a New York detention centre on Sunday awaiting drug charges after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an audacious raid to capture him, saying the United States would take control of the oil-producing nation.
The image of the 63-year-old Maduro blindfolded and handcuffed en route to the U.S. has stunned Venezuelans and was Washington’s most controversial intervention in Latin America since the invasion of Panama 36 years ago.
Maduro, who wished his captors a “Happy New Year” on arrival on Saturday, is due to appear in a Manhattan court on Monday.
With memories of painful U.S. interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, many world leaders were staggered at Trump’s move, even though Maduro’s standing was low given his autocratic rule and substantial evidence of vote-rigging.
The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval. Venezuelan Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez, meanwhile, demanded that the U.S. free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president.
Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Rodríguez, who didn’t give a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured but none killed.
Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.
After arriving at a small airport in New York City’s northern suburbs, Maduro was flown by helicopter to Manhattan, where a convoy of law enforcement vehicles, including an armoured car, was waiting to whisk him to a nearby U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office.
Operation ‘should serve as warning,’ Trump says
Trump claimed the U.S. government would help lead the country and was already doing so, though there were no immediate visible signs of that.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump told a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Saturday.
He boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”
U.S. President Donald Trump said his country will ‘run’ Venezuela following the U.S.-led ouster of President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday. Trump did not provide a timeline but said the stewardship would last until ‘a proper transition can take place.’
To the disappointment of Venezuela’s opposition and diaspora, Trump has given short shrift to the idea of 58-year-old opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, taking over, saying she lacked support.
Machado was banned from standing in Venezuela’s 2024 election and has said her ally, Edmundo González, 76 — who overwhelmingly won that vote, according to the opposition and some international observers — should now take the presidency.
Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, and the U.S. Justice Department released a new indictment on Saturday of Maduro and his wife that painted his administration as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fuelled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S with cocaine. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro as the country’s leader.
The Trump administration spent months building up U.S. forces in the region and carrying out attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean for allegedly ferrying drugs. Last month, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. campaign began in September.
Early-morning attack
Taking place 36 years to the day after the 1990 surrender and seizure of Panama’s leader, Manuel Noriega, following a U.S. invasion, the Venezuela operation unfolded under the cover of darkness early Saturday. Trump said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights” in Caracas while forces moved in to extract Maduro and his wife.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had rehearsed their manoeuvres for months, learning everything about Maduro — where he was and what he ate, as well as details of his pets and his clothes.
“We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again and again,” Caine said. “Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong.”
Multiple explosions rang out Saturday morning, and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. Maduro’s government accused the U.S. of hitting civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets. The explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they saw and heard.
Restrictions imposed by the U.S. government on airspace around Venezuela and the Caribbean expired early Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on social media platform X, an announcement that suggested any further immediate major U.S. military action was unlikely. “Airlines are informed, and will update their schedules quickly,” he posted.
Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. Rodríguez, however, stressed during a Saturday appearance on state television that she did not plan to assume power, before Venezuela’s high court ordered that she become interim president.
“There is only one president in Venezuela,” Rodriguez said, “and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”
Some streets in Caracas fill up
Venezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.
Maduro took over when Chávez died in 2013. His 2018 re-election was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating. During the 2024 election, electoral authorities loyal to the ruling party declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
Venezuela’s capital remained unusually quiet on Sunday, with few vehicles moving around and convenience stores, gas stations and other businesses closed. On a road typically filled with runners, cyclists and other fitness enthusiasts on Sundays, only a handful of people worked out the day after Maduro was deposed.
The presidential palace was guarded by armed civilians and members of the military. At a nearby plaza, only a street sweeper and a soldier stood, and across the street, a church remained close for the second day in a row.
Caracas resident David Leal arrived to the lot where he parks vehicles for a living, only to quickly realize that he would likely not see any clients for a second day.
“People are still shaken,” Leal, 77, said.
Questions of legality linger
Whether the U.S. violated any laws, international or otherwise, was still a question early Sunday. “There are a number of international legal concepts which the United States might have broken by capturing Maduro,” said Ilan Katz, an international law analyst.
Pope Leo XIV, who last month had expressed concern about growing U.S. threats of military intervention in Venezuela, raised alarms during his Sunday noon blessing and said the good of the Venezuelan people must prevail above everything else. History’s first U.S. pope demanded an end to violence and for Venezuela’s sovereignty to be guaranteed.
In New York, the United Nations Security Council, acting on an emergency request from Colombia, planned to hold a meeting on U.S. operations in Venezuela on Monday morning.
Lawmakers from both U.S. political parties have raised reservations and flat-out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling. Congress has not approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said he had seen no evidence that would justify Trump striking Venezuela without approval from Congress and demanded an immediate briefing by the administration on “its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”
www.cbc.ca (Article Sourced Website)
#Venezuelas #Maduro #sits #U.S #custody #loyalists #vow #defiance #CBC #News