CARACAS, Venezuela (LifeSiteNews) — The United States government captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and flew the socialist dictator out of the country after a military operation early Saturday morning that stunned the world.
Maduro was transported with his wife, Cilia Flores, to New York, where the two will face drugs and weapons charges, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
Maduro and Flores “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” Bondi wrote on X. The pair arrived at Stewart International Airport in New York on Saturday evening, and their arraignment is expected on Monday, Fox News reported.
Maduro’s charges include “narco-terrorism conspiracy,” “cocaine importation conspiracy,” “possession of machineguns and destructive devices,” and “conspiracy to possess machineguns and destructive devices,” according to an indictment filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in a New York federal court.
The indictment accuses the South American dictator of working to transport “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States” and says that he “partnered with some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists in the world” to flood the U.S. with the deadly drug.
Maduro was previously indicted by the U.S. in 2020 under the first Trump administration.
He and Flores were dragged by U.S. Army special forces from their bedroom on Saturday morning after military strikes on Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, and taken to the USS Iwo Jima warship, President Donald Trump said.
Trump said in a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday that the United State will “run” Venezuela temporarily to provide for a “safe transition.”
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” he declared. “We don’t want to be involved with somebody else getting in and we have the same situation we had for the last long period of years.”
In the press conference, General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, detailed the operation to capture Maduro, describing it as “meticulously planned” and “unprecedented.”
The raid, named “Operation Absolute Resolve” and ordered by Trump, involved more than 150 aircraft and was “the culmination of months of planning and rehearsal,” according to Caine.
“Over the course of the night, aircraft began launching from 20 different bases on land and sea across the Western Hemisphere,” he explained, adding that the operation was “conducted during the darkest hours” of January 2.
“This was an audacious operation that only the United States could do,” he said. “As we stand here this morning, our forces remain in the region at a high state of readiness, prepared to project power, defend themselves and our interests in the region.”
No American troops were killed in the attack.
Venezuelan migrants around the world rejoiced at the news of Maduro’s capture, gathering to celebrate in the U.S., Chile, and elsewhere.
Videos show Venezuelans rallying in Miami and Doral, Florida, reportedly taking to the streets in Venezuela itself, and praising God.
The collapse of Venezuela’s Maduro government has significant implications for the communist regime of Cuba as well, which relies on Venezuelan oil.
Cuba and other communist nations, including China and North Korea, strongly condemned the raid on Maduro, as did Russia and Brazil’s leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Thousands of killings, other abuses under Maduro
Maduro, who rose to power in 2013 as the chosen successor of Venezuela’s late far-left president Hugo Chávez, has become infamous for his government’s widespread human rights abuses, including killings, arbitrary arrests, “disappearances,” and torture.
Venezuelan special forces committed more than 5,000 extrajudicial killings in 2018 alone, according to a United Nations report, with other groups alleging an even higher number of victims. The Maduro regime has also jailed thousands of protesters and other perceived political opponents and frequently tortured and abused prisoners, human rights groups have attested.
Venezuela held more than 860 political prisoners as of December 2025, according to Foro Penal, a Venezuelan NGO. The UN’s Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela has accused the Maduro government of “crimes against humanity.”
Maduro is also widely recognized as having stolen the 2018 and 2024 Venezuelan presidential elections.
Anti-Catholic persecution in Venezuela
Maduro’s persecution has extended to the Catholic Church in the country, which is predominantly Catholic. In December, Venezuelan authorities blocked Cardinal Baltazar Porras, the 81-year-old former archbishop of Caracas, from boarding a flight out of the country, detaining him, confiscating his Venezuelan passport, and rejecting his Vatican passport.
Cardinal Porras and Venezuela’s other cardinal, Monsignor Diego Padrón, the former archbishop of Cumaná, had strongly criticized Maduro after the 2024 election for committing “obvious fraud” and “usurpation” and attempting a “coup d’etat.” The two prelates urged non-violent resistance against the regime.
They also warned that the country was headed toward a “Nicaraguan style of government,” referring to Nicaragua’s brutal oppression of the Church under communist dictator Daniel Ortega, who has jailed bishops and priests and shut down churches and other Catholic institutions.
Cardinal Porras has further said that the Venezuelan government has surveilled priests’ homilies and closed Catholic schools in retaliation against the Church. In 2019, the government blocked the bishop of the Diocese of San Cristóbal from celebrating Mass at a chapel for inmates and attempted to prevent him from celebrating Mass at a hospital chapel.
Maduro has demonized Venezuela’s Catholic bishops, calling them “insects, with the devil in their cassock.”
Maduro supporters have violently attacked Catholic churches in the country as well, at times disrupting Holy Mass and desecrating the Blessed Sacrament.
Last fall, during an event at Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, a businessman close to Maduro assaulted a Catholic journalist for asking a Venezuelan archbishop a question critical of the country’s government.
Socialist Venezuela’s economic collapse
Under Maduro’s leadership, Venezuela has suffered a catastrophic economic collapse due to his and Chavez’s socialist policies, including price controls, massive public spending, and the nationalization of major industries.
The formerly wealthy, oil-rich country’s gross domestic product (GDP) reportedly fell more than 80 percent between 2013 and 2020, and Venezuela’s poverty rate exceeded 90 percent during Maduro’s reign, with more than half of the nation living in “extreme poverty.” Venezuela – once the richest country in Latin America – has been plagued by shortages of food, water, medicine, and other basic goods in recent years.
Nearly eight million Venezuelans – around 20 percent of the population – have fled since 2014, making Venezuela’s displacement crisis one of the worst in the world, according to the UN.
Maduro’s Venezuela is often cited as a prime example of the failure of socialism.
In addition to far-left economic policies, Maduro has co-opted LGBT ideology, using “gender-inclusive” language and endorsing homosexual “marriage.” His political party established offices for “sex diversity” and a subcommittee for “LGBTQ issues,” according to Politico.