After seizing Maduro, Trump says US will ‘run’ Venezuela

By Eric Schmitt, Tyler Pager, Anatoly Kurmanaev and Carol Rosenberg

WASHINGTON — The United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a swift and overwhelming military operation early Saturday (3) and flew him to New York to face criminal charges. It was a stunning culmination of a months-long campaign by President Donald Trump and his aides to oust the authoritarian leader.

Hours after the raid that captured Maduro and his wife, Trump said at a news conference that the United States would “run the country” until a proper transition of power could be arranged, raising the prospect of an open-ended commitment. He offered few details, however, and it was not clear whether he meant US forces would occupy the country, although he said he was not afraid of “boots on the ground”.

It was not evident how much control the United States had over the country. There were no obvious signs of a US military presence in Venezuela on Saturday, as Venezuelans began to assess the damage from the US airstrikes and the ground incursion that led to the capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the news conference that US warplanes had dismantled Venezuelan air defences so that Special Operations forces could go into Caracas in helicopters to extract Maduro and Flores from a residence. Trump said that Caracas was in darkness, implying that the Americans had cut the power.

Maduro’s whereabouts in Venezuela had been monitored by a fleet of stealth drones as well as a CIA source within the Venezuelan government, according to people briefed on the operation.

Caine said that the helicopters had taken fire from Venezuelan forces, but that none were lost. The whole operation lasted about 2 hours, 20 minutes, he said.

Trump, who watched the operation by video from Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, said the Venezuelan military had been quickly overwhelmed. “They knew we were coming,” he said at the news conference. “Not a single American service member was killed,” he added, though two US officials said later that about half a dozen soldiers were injured.

At least 40 people in Venezuela were killed in Saturday’s attack, including military personnel and civilians, according to a senior Venezuelan official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe preliminary reports. Images emerging from the country showed damage to military facilities and to an apartment building outside Caracas.

After their capture, Maduro and Flores were taken by helicopter to the USS Iwo Jima, one of the US warships that had been prowling the Caribbean. Trump posted a photo on social media of Maduro aboard the Iwo Jima, blindfolded and handcuffed and wearing a grey sweatshirt and sweatpants.

Later on Saturday, Maduro and Flores were flown by plane to Stewart International Airport north of New York City. More than two dozen federal law enforcement agents, some recording with their cellphones, surrounded Maduro as he was led onto the tarmac. He and his wife were on the way to jail to face drug and weapons charges in federal court in Manhattan, where Attorney General Pam Bondi said they would “soon face the full wrath of American justice”.

The remarkable seizure of a country’s leader by another country brought immediate comparison to other landmark moments in US military history, including the capture of Saddam Hussein of Iraq in 2003 and Manuel Noriega of Panama in 1990 and the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Maduro, a self-described socialist, had led Venezuela since 2013, and the Biden administration accused him last year of stealing the election that kept him in power.

Trump offered no details about how the United States would oversee Venezuela, or for how long. Asked who was running Venezuela, Trump said “a group”.

Delcy Rodríguez, who had been Maduro’s vice president, was sworn in as interim president in a secret ceremony in Caracas. Trump indicated that Rodriguez would help the United States run the country, a surprising assertion because later in the day, she struck a defiant tone during a televised address to her nation. She accused the United States of invading her country under false pretences and said that Maduro was still Venezuela’s “only president”.

But Trump said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with Rodriguez. “She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump said.

The president also spoke at length at the news conference about American oil companies remaking the country’s energy infrastructure and, presumably, regaining rights they once held to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

Trump declined to throw his support behind Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, to become president. Machado posted a statement on social media calling for national unity following the capture of Maduro.

“Given his refusal to accept a negotiated exit, the government of the United States has fulfilled its promise to enforce the law,” she wrote. “We have struggled for years, we have given it our all, and it has been worth it. What had to happen is happening.”

The capture stunned many in Venezuela, despite Maduro’s unpopularity. State-run television aired videos of pro-Maduro rallies and protests taking place across several cities, including Caracas. People flocked to supermarkets around the country to stock up on water and food, anticipating shortages in the chaotic days to come.

Armed civilians who support the government had begun to gather in caravans in Cumaná, the capital of the state of Sucre, and many people said they were frightened. “The only thing that matters now is buying food,” said Alejandro Barreto, 26.

In Venezuelan expatriate communities in South Florida and New York City, the mood was decidedly different. In Doral, Florida, near Miami, people rejoiced, blaring music before dawn, honking car horns and dancing. “¡Viva Venezuela libre!” one man, waving a Venezuelan flag, yelled as he drove by El Arepazo, a Venezuelan arepa shop in a gas station where Venezuelans often gather for political or sporting events.

The raid to capture Maduro constituted Trump’s latest unilateral exercise of power. He had no explicit authorization from Congress, where a bipartisan group in the Senate has been promoting legislation to try to rein in his authority to engage in hostilities inside Venezuela.

Reactions from leaders inside the United States and around the world were divided, largely along political and international alliances.

Opponents of Trump questioned whether invading a foreign country for a law enforcement operation, and without congressional approval, was permitted under US or international law. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said that while Maduro was an “illegitimate ruler”, there was no evidence he posed a threat that justified military intervention.

“The administration must immediately brief Congress on its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision,” Himes said.

In his first public break with Trump since taking office two days ago, Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City said he had called the president to personally object to the operation in Venezuela, calling it “a violation of federal and international law”.

The mayor, pressed by reporters, declined to characterize the president’s response. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the call.

Republicans applauded the raid. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, said the capture of Maduro was “an important first step to bring him to justice for the drug crimes for which he has been indicted in the United States,” and called the operation a “decisive action” by Trump.

The governments of Ecuador and Argentina, and others sympathetic to the United States, praised the operation, while China, Iran and Russia condemned it.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, said in a statement that he was alarmed by the events. “Independently of the situation in Venezuela, these developments constitute a dangerous precedent.” The statement said Guterres was “deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected.” The UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting on Monday (5) to discuss what had happened.

Three separate policy goals have driven the administration’s approach to Venezuela: crippling Maduro, using military force against drug cartels and securing access to the country’s vast oil reserves for US companies. While Trump said little about how the United States would be “running” Venezuela, he insisted it “won’t cost us anything” because American oil companies would rebuild the energy infrastructure.

The commando raid capped off months of threats, warnings and accusations of drug smuggling from Trump and his Cabinet, all centred on Maduro, whom the State Department has called the head of a “narco-terrorist” state. US officials have accused him of controlling criminal groups tied to drug trafficking, charges he denies.

For several months, the US military has conducted a legally disputed campaign of airstrikes against boats alleged to be used by drug traffickers. The strikes have killed more than 100 people in the waters around Latin America.

Since late August, the Pentagon has amassed a dozen ships in the Caribbean. The arrival of the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford and three missile-firing Navy destroyers in November added about 5,500 military personnel to a force of 10,000 troops already in the region, roughly half ashore in Puerto Rico and half at sea. With more than 15,000 military personnel, the US buildup is one of the largest in the region since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Last month, Trump called it a “massive armada” and said that he was planning action on land in Venezuela “soon”.

As the strikes against boats continued throughout the fall, Trump, Rubio and Stephen Miller, a top White House aide overseeing immigration policy, moved on to the next stage of the campaign against Maduro: seizing oil tankers to deprive Venezuela of revenue. They insisted that Maduro must return oil and other assets “stolen” from the United States before they lift what Trump has referred to as a blockade.

In its first weeks, the tactic shook Venezuela’s economy by paralyzing its oil industry. Critics called it gunboat diplomacy or, as Maduro put it, “a warmongering and colonialist pretence”.

On Tuesday (Dec 30), the administration’s pursuit of sanctioned vessels took a bizarre turn when the crew of an oil tanker fleeing US forces in the Atlantic Ocean painted a Russian flag on the side of the vessel, in an apparent attempt to claim Russian protection.

In the days leading up to the raid, the US sent to the region increasing numbers of Special Operations aircraft, specialized electronic warfare planes, armed Reaper drones, search-and-rescue helicopters and fighter jets — last-minute reinforcements that military analysts said indicated the only question was when military action would happen, not if.

Despite its buildup of forces, the Pentagon has not positioned enough troops to mount any sort of invasion of Venezuela.

-New York Times