Venezuelans

WASHINGTON — After President Trump ordered strikes that led to the capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, celebrations erupted in Venezuelan communities across the U.S.

But for many of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants facing possible deportation, their relief and joy were cut by the fear about what comes next from an administration that has zeroed in on Venezuelans as a target.

“Many of us asked ourselves, ‘What’s going to happen with us now?’” said A.G., a 39-year-old in Tennessee who asked to be identified by her initials because she lacks legal status. Even so, Maduro’s ouster gave her a lot of hope for her mother country.

Venezuelans began fleeing in droves in 2014 as economic collapse led to widespread food and medicine shortages, as well as political repression. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans are now living outside the country — including 1.2 million in the U.S.

Venezuelans migrants walk toward Bucaramanga, Colombia, in 2019.

(Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)

A.G. and her now-18-year-old son arrived at the southern border in 2019. Since then, she said, they have built a good life — they own a transport company with delivery trucks, pay taxes and follow the law.

Maduro’s fall left her with mixed feelings.

“He’s obviously a dictator, many people have died because of him and he refused to give up power, but the reason that they entered Venezuela, for me what President Trump did was illegal,” she said. “Innocent people died because of the bombs. I’m asking God that it all be for good reason.”

Dozens of Venezuelans and others were killed in the U.S. invasion — more than 100, a government official said — including civilians.

The Trump administration is framing its Venezuela operation as an opportunity for Venezuelans like A.G. “Now, they can return to the country they love and rebuild its future,” said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Matthew Tragesser.

Katie Blankenship, a Miami-based attorney with Sanctuary of the South who has represented many Venezuelans facing deportation, sees a less promising future.

“We’re going to see increased targeting of Venezuelans to force them to leave the U.S. into a political and socioeconomic environment that’s likely only more destabilized and subject to more abuse,” she said.

The Venezuelan community in the U.S. swelled, in part, because the Biden administration expanded pathways for them to enter the country.

Volunteer help a Venezuelan immigrant at the storage units from a volunteer-run program that distributes donations to recently arrived Venezuelan immigrants in need, in Miami, Fla., in 2023.

(Eva Marie Uzcategui / Los Angeles Times)

One of those programs allowed more than 117,000 Venezuelans to purchase flights directly to the U.S. and stay for two years if they had a U.S.-based financial sponsor and passed a background check. Other Venezuelans entered legally at land ports of entry after scheduling interviews with border officers.

By the end of the Biden administration, more than 600,000 Venezuelans had protection from deportation under Temporary Protected Status, a program used by both Republican and Democratic administrations for immigrants who cannot return home because of armed conflict, natural disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly referred to Venezuelan immigrants as criminals, singling them out more than any other nationality — in 64% of speeches, an Axios analysis showed. He has said repeatedly, without evidence that Venezuela emptied its prisons and mental institutions to flood the U.S. with immigrants.

One of Trump’s first acts as president was to designate the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization. Within two months, he invoked an 18th century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport 252 Venezuelan men accused of being Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador, where they were imprisoned and tortured despite many having no criminal histories in the U.S. or Latin America.

Later, the Trump administration stripped away protections for Venezuelans with financial sponsors and TPS, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling the latter “contrary to the national interest.”

In a September Federal Register Notice, Noem said that TPS for Venezuelans undercut the administration’s foreign policy objectives because one result of allowing Venezuelans in the U.S. was “relieving pressure on Maduro’s regime to enact domestic reforms and facilitate safe return conditions.” In other words, if Venezuelans returned home, that would pressure the government to enact reforms.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, along with U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, left, and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, right, participates in a news conference near Camp 57 at Angola prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary and America’s largest maximum-security prison farm, to announce the opening of a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility that will house immigrants convicted of crimes in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, on Sept. 3, 2025.

(Matthew Hilton / AFP via Getty Images)

The administration has offered contrasting assessments of conditions in Venezuela. Noem wrote that although certain adverse conditions continue, “there are notable improvements in several areas such as the economy, public health, and crime.”

Throughout the year, though, the State Department continued to reissue an “extreme danger” travel advisory for Venezuela, urging Americans to leave the country immediately.

Conditions for Venezuelans in the U.S. grew more complicated after a man from Afghanistan was accused of shooting two National Guard members in November; in response, the administration froze the immigration cases of people from 39 countries, including Venezuela, that the administration considers “high-risk.” That means anyone who applied for asylum, a visa, a green card or any other benefit remains in limbo indefinitely.

After a panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act in September, the Justice Department appealed. In a support brief filed in December, the Justice Department cited escalating tensions with Venezuela.

David Smilde, a Tulane University sociologist and expert on Venezuelan politics, said that invading Venezuela could justify renewed use of the Alien Enemies Act.

The law says the president can invoke the Alien Enemies Act not only in times of “declared war,” but also when a foreign government threatens or carries out an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” against the U.S.

“Now it will be difficult, I think, for the court to say, ‘No, you can’t use this,’” Smilde said.

With U.S. officials promising improved conditions in Venezuela and encouraging citizens to return, Smilde said, they could invoke the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport undocumented immigrants who don’t leave willingly.

“There’s several layers to this,” he said, “and none of it looks very good for Venezuelan immigrants.”

This couple from Venezuela shared their story of why they left their three children back in their home country and spoke of the the experiences of their travel to the United States at the Parkside Community Church in Sacramento on June 16, 2023.

(Jose Luis Villegas / For The Times)

Jose, a 28-year-old Venezuelan living east of Los Angeles, fled Venezuela in 2015 after being imprisoned and beaten for criticizing the government. He lived in Colombia and Peru before illegally crossing the U.S. border in 2022, and now has a pending asylum application. Jose asked to be identified by his middle name out of fear of retaliation by the U.S. government.

The news this week that an ICE agent had shot and killed a woman in Minnesota heightened his anxiety.

“You come here because supposedly this is a country with freedom of expression, and there is more safety, but with this government, now you’re afraid you’ll get killed,” he said. “And that was a U.S. citizen. Imagine what they could do to me?”

People visit a memorial for Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis.

(Scott Olson / Getty Images)

Jose qualifies for a work permit based on his pending asylum, but his application for one is frozen because of the executive order following the National Guard shooting.

The news of Maduro’s arrest was bittersweet, Jose said, because his mother and grandmother didn’t live to witness that day. He said his mother died last year of kidney failure due to lack of medical care, leaving him as the primary breadwinner for his two young sisters who remain in Venezuela with their father, who is disabled.

Still, he said he’s happy with what Trump has done in Venezuela.

“People are saying he’s stealing our petroleum,” he said, “but for 25 years, Cuba, China and Iran have been stealing the petroleum and it didn’t improve our lives.”

Many Venezuelans were encouraged by news that Venezuela would release a “significant number” of political prisoners as a peace gesture.

For Jose, that’s not enough. Venezuela’s government ordered police to search for anyone involved in promoting or supporting the attack by U.S. forces, leading to detentions of journalists and civilians.

“Venezuela remains the same,” he said. “The same disgrace, the same poverty and the same government repression.”

A.G. said she was heartened to hear Noem say Sunday on Fox News that every Venezeulan who had TPS “has the opportunity to apply for refugee status and that evaluation will go forward.” But the administration quickly backtracked and said that was not the case.

Instead, Noem and other administration officials have doubled down on the notion that Venezuelans without permanent lawful status should leave. Noem told Fox News that there are no plans to pause deportation flights despite the political uncertainty in Venezuela.

Tragesser, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman, said the agency’s posture hasn’t changed.

“USCIS encourages all Venezuelans unlawfully in the U.S. to use the CBP Home app for help with a safe and orderly return to their country,” he said.

Caracas, January 5, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan social movements and political parties held a massive rally in Caracas on January 4 to reject the US military attacks against the country and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro.

The Sunday march took place in the center of the Venezuelan capital and ended close to Miraflores Presidential Palace.

Demonstrators held handmade signs demanding the release and return of Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, who were abducted in the early hours of January 3 by a US special operations team. US forces bombed several military sites in Caracas and surrounding states.

Venezuelan authorities have yet to report on damages and casualties, with unofficial sources claiming at least 80 people killed.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has taken over the presidency on an interim basis after a ruling from the Supreme Court. Following a Sunday cabinet meeting, Rodríguez called on the US to respect the country’s sovereignty and invited Washington to agree to an “agenda of cooperation.”

Photos by Rome Arrieche.

It was his 26th birthday, so Wilmer Castro was not surprised by the flurry of messages that lit up his phone.

However, as he began scrolling on Saturday morning, he realised the messages were not birthday wishes, but news of something he had long hoped for: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had been removed from power.

“I think it is the best gift that I will ever receive, one I will never forget,” the university student said from Ejido.

Castro told Al Jazeera that he was so elated by the news that he began daydreaming about his future self recounting the story of Maduro’s fall to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“I will tell them that on January 3, 2026, a dictator fell, and [that moment] is going to be very beautiful.”

The abduction of Venezuela’s long-time authoritarian leader – and his wife – by the United States followed months of escalating tensions between the two countries, including US strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels and the deployment of US ships near Venezuela’s coastal waters.

But by Sunday morning, Castro’s initial jubilation was clouded by a heavy quiet. The weight of uncertainty brought the city to a sombre pause, one that closed in on him and felt unlike anything he had experienced before.

“It’s like being in a field with nothing else around. It’s a mournful silence; I can’t describe it,” he said.

That uncertainty was felt by many Venezuelans on Sunday morning.

Venezuela has had a socialist government since 1999, first under President Hugo Chavez and later Maduro, a period that began with oil-funded social programmes but unravelled into economic mismanagement, corruption and repression – with international sanctions further squeezing the population.

Momentum around the 2024 presidential election raised hopes that the opposition alliance would take control. But when Maduro declared victory, despite opposition claims of a landslide win for Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a crackdown on dissent followed. It left many Venezuelans concluding that any real transition might depend on pressure — or even intervention — from outside the country.

‘Deathly silence’

In southeastern Caracas on Saturday, 54-year-old Edward Ocariz was jolted awake by a loud crash and the vibrating windows of his home near the Fort Tiuna military barracks. He thought it was an earthquake, but when he looked outside, he saw unfamiliar helicopters flying low above smoke rising in the city.

“The noise kept coming,” he said. “I could immediately tell the helicopters were not Venezuelan because I had never seen them here.”

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.

“There was a deathly silence,” Ocariz said, adding that the brief suspension of mobile phone services and power outages contributed to the silence. “We were waiting to understand what was happening.”

Fear accompanied the fragments of information that did manage to seep through, Ocariz said. “But it was a fear mixed with joy – tremendous joy. It’s hard to explain.”

On Sunday, when images of a blindfolded and handcuffed Maduro began circulating, Ocariz reflected on the suffering he had endured under the president’s regime.

The human rights activist said he was wrongfully charged with “terrorism” and spent nearly five months as a political prisoner in Tocuyito prison, a maximum-security facility in Carabobo state.

Under Maduro, the country had a long history of jailing those who dissent. After the disputed 2024 election, nearly 2,500 protesters, human rights activists, journalists and opposition figures were arrested. While some were later released, others remain behind bars.

“I felt satisfied. A process of justice is finally beginning,” Ocariz said, fully aware that Maduro will not have to endure the dire prison conditions he did, or be denied food and legal representation.

Despite the joy he and other Venezuelans now feel, Ocariz warns that much remains to be done.

“The population still feels a huge amount of fear [from the authorities] — psychological fear — because it’s well known how the police and justice system use their power to criminalise whoever they choose.”

So far, key institutions remain in the hands of figures from Nicolas Maduro’s inner circle, including Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who has been named acting president.

But for many Venezuelans — including Castro and Ocariz — seeing a senior Chavista figure still in power is unsettling, particularly as the Trump administration continues to engage with her.

“It is certainly frustrating for me. However, I understand that Venezuela needs to continue with its administrative, functional, and operational management as a country, as a nation,” Ocariz said, adding that the US must maintain some order to control the power vacuum and stamp out repression.

Economic concerns

Venezuela remains heavily militarised, and fears of further unrest linger. During periods of dissent, the authorities relied not only on formal security forces but also on “colectivos”, armed civilian groups accused by rights organisations of intimidation and violence.

Jose Chalhoub, an energy and political risk analyst at Jose Parejo & Associates in Caracas, said he is concerned about the possibility of more attacks and social unrest.

“Any potential new government that will move ahead with the cleansing of the top ranks of the armed forces and security and police forces will lead to the disarmament of the colectivos,” he said, adding that fixing the lingering economic crisis should also be one of the main priorities.

“A new government that applies quick economic measures leading to a recovery will outshine the ideological legacy of the Bolivarian revolution,” he said, referring to the ideology of Chavismo, defined by anti-imperialism, patriotism and socialism.

Those loyal to Maduro have long blamed Venezuela’s economic woes on the US — namely, the sanctions it imposed on the oil sector.

Chalhoub said he believed Trump’s promise to boost the country’s oil production could help the economy, though he found the US president’s assertion that the US will “run the country” baffling.

However, not everyone is happy with the Trump administration’s attack.

Alex Rajoy, a mototaxi driver in Caracas, said the US president was on an imperialist crusade with the goal of “robbing” Venezuela of its natural resources.

Despite his anger, Rajoy said he will stay home over the coming days because he is fearful of further attacks.

“These missiles aren’t aimed only at Chavistas,” he said, referring to those loyal to Venezuela’s socialist ideology.

“They threaten opposition people, too,” he said, adding that anyone supporting foreign intervention amounts to a betrayal. “It’s treason against the homeland,” he said.

What now?

For Castro, the university student, the elation he felt on Saturday has been interrupted by fear for his immediate needs – concerns over whether stores would remain open in Ejido and rising costs. Under Maduro, he has long struggled to afford basic items.

“People in the street were going crazy yesterday,” he said. “Everyone was buying food with half of what they had in their bank accounts, buying what they could, because we don’t know what the future holds.”

The scenes brought back memories of the shortages of 2016, when hyperinflation and scarcity plunged the country into crisis, forcing people to queue for hours and rush between shops with limits on how much each person could buy.

But a day after the attack, Castro said Venezuelans are reflecting on the future of their country and the uncertainty of that future.

“There’s happiness, there’s fear, there’s gratitude, there’s the ‘what will happen next?’” he said. “For my next birthday, I want total freedom for Venezuela – and hopefully, God willing, we will have it.”

Venezuelan officials say US air strikes killed at least 40 people, destroyed parts of the capital and violated their national sovereignty with the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro. Venezuelans are divided between fear of ongoing US intervention and celebrating his removal.

WASHINGTON — Maria Eugenia Torres Ramirez was having dinner with her family in Los Angeles on Friday night when the flood of messages began. Word had begun to circulate that the U.S. was invading Venezuela and would seize its president, Nicolás Maduro.

Torres Ramirez, 38, fled her native country in 2021, settled in L.A. and has a pending application for asylum. Her family is scattered throughout the world — Colombia, Chile and France. Since her parents died, none of her loved ones remain in Venezuela.

Still, news that the autocrat who separated them had been captured delivered a sense of long-awaited elation and united the siblings and cousins across continents for a rare four-hour phone call as the night unfolded.

“I waited for this moment for so long from within Venezuela, and now that I’m out, it’s like watching a movie,” said Torres Ramirez, a former political activist who opposed Maduro. “It’s like a jolt of relief.”

Many Venezuelans across the U.S. celebrated the military action that resulted in Maduro’s arrest. Economic collapse and political repression led roughly 8 million Venezuelans to emigrate since 2014, making it one of the world’s largest displacement crises.

About 770,000 live in the U.S. as of 2023, concentrated mainly in the regions of Miami, Orlando, Houston and New York. Just over 9,500 live in L.A., according to a 2024 U.S. Census estimate.

In the South Florida city of Doral, home to the largest Venezuelan American community, residents poured into the streets Saturday morning, carrying the Venezuelan flag, singing together and praising the military action as an act of freedom.

In Los Angeles, a different picture emerged as groups opposed to Maduro’s arrest took to the streets, though none identified themselves as being of Venezuelan descent. At a rally of about 40 people south of downtown Los Angeles, John Parker, a representative of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, called the raid a “brutal assault and kidnapping” that amounted to a war crime.

The United States’ intervention in Venezuela had nothing to do with stopping the flow of drugs, he said, and everything to do with undermining a legitimate socialist government. Parker called for Maduro to be set free as a few dozen protesters behind him chanted, “Hands off Venezuela.”

Parker said when he visited Venezuela a few weeks ago as part of a U.S. peacemaking delegation, he saw “the love people had for Maduro.”

A later demonstration in Pershing Square drew hundreds out in the rain to protest the U.S intervention. But when a speaker led chants of “No war in Venezuela,” a woman draped in a Venezuelan flag attempted to approach him and speak into the microphone. A phalanx of demonstrators circled her and shuttled her away.

At Mi Venezuela, a restaurant in Vernon, 16-year-old Paola Moleiro and her family ordered empanadas Saturday morning.

A portion of one of the restaurant’s walls was covered in Venezuelan bank notes scrawled with messages. One read: “3 de enero del 2026. Venezuela quedo libre.”

Venezuela is free.

Around midnight the night before, Paola started getting messages on WhatsApp from her relatives in Venezuela. The power was out, they said, and they forwarded videos of what sounded like bomb blasts.

Paola was terrified. She’d left Venezuela at age 7 with her parents and siblings, first for Panama and later the U.S., in 2023. But the rest of her family remained in Venezuela, and she had no idea what was going on.

Paola and her family stayed up scanning television channels for some idea of what was happening. Around 1:30 a.m., President Trump announced that U.S. forces had captured Maduro.

“The first thing I did, I called my aunt and said, ‘We are going to see each other again,’” she said.

Because of the Venezuelan state’s control over media, her relatives had no idea their leader had been seized by U.S. forces. “Are you telling me the truth?” Paola said her aunt asked.

Paola hasn’t been home in nine years. She misses her grandmother and her grandmother’s cooking, especially her caraotas negras, or black beans. As a child, she said, certain foods were so scarce that she had an apple for the first time only after moving to Panama.

Paola said she was grateful to Trump for ending decades of authoritarian rule that had reduced her home country to a shell of what it once was.

“Venezuela has always prayed for this,” she said. “It’s been 30 years. I feel it was in God’s hands last night.”

For Torres Ramirez, it was difficult to square her appreciation for Trump’s accomplishment in Venezuela with the fear she has felt as an immigrant under his presidency.

“It’s like a double-edged sword,” she said. “Throughout the course of this whole year, I have felt persecuted. I had to face ICE — I had to go to my appointment with the fear that I could lose it all because the immigration policies had changed and there was complete uncertainty. For a moment, I felt as if I was in Venezuela. I felt persecuted right here.”

During a news conference Saturday morning, Trump said Maduro was responsible for trafficking illicit drugs into the U.S. and the deaths of thousands of Americans. He repeated a baseless claim that the Maduro government had emptied Venezuela’s prisons and mental institutions and “sent their worst and most violent monsters into the United States to steal American lives.”

“They sent everybody bad into the United States, but no longer, and we have now a border where nobody gets through,” he said.

Trump also announced that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela and its vast oil reserves.

“We’ll run it professionally,” he said. “We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world go in and invest billions and billions of dollars and take that money, use that money in Venezuela, and the biggest beneficiary are going to be the people of Venezuela.”

Torres Ramirez said that while she’s happy about Maduro’s ouster, she’s unsure how to feel about Trump’s announcement saying the U.S. will take over Venezuela’s oil industry. Perhaps it won’t be favorable in the long term for Venezuela’s economy, she said, but the U.S. intervention is a win for the country’s political future if it means people can return home.

Patricia Andrade, 63, who runs Raíces Venezolanas, a volunteer program in Miami that distributes donations to Venezuelan immigrants, said she believes the Trump administration is making the right move by remaining involved until there is a transition of power.

Andrade, a longtime U.S. citizen, said she hasn’t been to Venezuela in 25 years — even missing the deaths of both parents. She said she was accused of treason for denouncing the imprisonment of political opponents and the degradation of Venezuela’s democracy under Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez. She said she worries that Venezuela’s remaining political prisoners could be killed as payback for Maduro’s arrest.

“We tried everything — elections, marches, more elections … and it couldn’t be done,” she said. “Maduro was getting worse and worse, there was more repression. If they hadn’t removed him, we were never going to recover Venezuela.”

While she doesn’t want the U.S. to fix the problems of other countries, she thanked Trump for U.S. involvement in Venezuela.

She said she can’t wait to visit her remaining family members there.

CARACAS, Venezuela — It was about 2 a.m. Saturday Caracas time when the detonations began, lighting up the sullen sky like a post-New Year’s fireworks display.

“¡Ya comenzó!” was the recurrent phrase in homes, telephone conversations and social media chats as the latest iteration of U.S. “shock and awe” rocked the Venezuelan capital. “It has begun!”

Then the question: “¿Maduro?”

The great uncertainty was the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro, who has been under Trump administration threat for months.

The scenes of revelry from a joyous Venezuelan diaspora celebrating from Miami to Madrid were not repeated here. Fear of the unknown kept most at home.

Hours would pass before news reports from outside Venezuela confirmed that U.S. forces had captured Maduro and placed him on a U.S. ship to face criminal charges in federal court in New York.

Venezuelans had watched the unfolding spectacle from their homes, using social media to exchange images of explosions and the sounds of bombardment. This moment, it was clear, was ushering in a new era of uncertainly for Venezuela, a nation reeling from a decade of economic, political and social unrest.

Government supporters display posters of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, right, and former President Hugo Chávez in downtown Caracas on Saturday.

(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)

The ultimate result was an imponderable. But that this was a transformative moment — for good or bad — seemed indisputable.

By daybreak, an uneasy calm overtook the city of more than 3 million. The explosions and the drone of U.S. aircraft ceased. Blackouts cut electricity to parts of the capital.

Pro-government youths wielding automatic rifles set up roadblocks or sped through the streets on motorcycles, a warning to those who might celebrate Maduro’s downfall.

Shops, gas stations and other businesses were mostly closed. There was little traffic.

“When I heard the explosions, I grabbed my rosary and began to pray,” said Carolina Méndez, 50, who was among the few who ventured out Saturday, seeking medicines at a pharmacy, though no personnel had arrived to attend to clients waiting on line. “I’m very scared now. That’s why I came to buy what I need.”

A sense of alarm was ubiquitous.

“People are buying bottled water, milk and eggs,” said Luz Pérez, a guard at one of the few open shops, not far from La Carlota airport, one of the sites targeted by U.S. strikes. “I heard the explosions. It was very scary. But the owner decided to open anyway to help people.”

Customers were being allowed to enter three at a time. Most didn’t want to speak. Their priority was to stock up on basics and get home safely.

Rumors circulated rapidly that U.S. forces had whisked away Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

There was no immediate official confirmation here of the detention of Maduro and Flores, both wanted in the United States for drug-trafficking charges — allegations that Maduro has denounced as U.S. propaganda. But then images of an apparently captive Maduro, blindfolded, in a sweatsuit soon circulated on social media.

There was no official estimate of Venezuelan casualties in the U.S. raid.

Rumors circulated indicating that a number of top Maduro aides had been killed, among them Diosdado Cabello, the security minister who is a staunch Maduro ally. Cabello is often the face of the government.

But Cabello soon appeared on official TV denouncing “the terrorist attack against our people,” adding: “Let no one facilitate the moves of the enemy invader.”

Although Trump, in his Saturday news conference, confidently predicted that the United States would “run” Venezuela, apparently during some undefined transitional period, it’s not clear how that will be accomplished.

A key question is whether the military — long a Maduro ally — will remain loyal now that he is in U.S. custody. There was no public indication Saturday of mass defections from the Venezuelan armed forces. Nor was it clear that Maduro’s government infrastructure had lost control of the country. Official media reported declarations of loyalty from pro-government politicians and citizens from throughout Venezuela.

In his comments, Trump spoke of a limited U.S. troop presence in Venezuela, focused mostly on protecting the oil infrastructure that his administration says was stolen from the United States — a characterization widely rejected here, even among Maduro’s critics. But Trump offered few details on sending in U.S. personnel to facilitate what could be a tumultuous transition.

Meantime, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez surfaced on official television and demanded the immediate release of Maduro and his wife, according to the official Telesur broadcast outlet. Her comments seemed to be the first official acknowledgment that Maduro had been taken.

“There is one president of this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” the vice president said in an address from Miraflores Palace, from where Maduro and his wife had been seized hours earlier.

During an emergency meeting of the National Defense Council, Telesur reported, Rodríguez labeled the couple’s detention an “illegal kidnapping.”

The Trump administration, the vice president charged, meant to “capture our energy, mineral and [other] natural resources.”

Her defiant words came after Trump, in his news conference, said that Rodríguez had been sworn in as the country’s interim president and had evinced a willingness to cooperate with Washington.

“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump said.

Pro-government armed civilians patrol in La Guaira, Venezuela, on Saturday after President Trump announced that President Nicolás Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country.

(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)

Somewhat surprisingly, Trump also seemed to rule out a role in an interim government for Marina Corina Machado, the Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime anti-Maduro activist.

“She’s a very nice woman, but doesn’t have respect within the country,” Trump said of Machado.

Machado is indeed a controversial figure within the fractured Venezuelan opposition. Some object to her open calls for U.S. intervention, preferring a democratic change in government.

Nonetheless, her stand-in candidate, Edmundo González, did win the presidency in national balloting last year, according to opposition activists and others, who say Maduro stole the election.

“Venezuelans, the moment of liberty has arrived!” Machado wrote in a letter released on X. “We have fought for years. … What was meant to happen is happening.”

Not everyone agreed.

“They want our oil and they say it’s theirs,” said Roberto, 65, a taxi driver who declined to give his last name for security reasons. “Venezuelans don’t agree. Yes, I think people will go out and defend their homeland.”

Special correspondent Mogollón reported from Caracas and staff writer McDonnell from Boston. Contributing was special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City.

Venezuelanalysis writer and editor Ricardo Vaz joined Sharmini Peries on theAnalysis.news to discuss the latest developments from Venezuela, including Washington’s military buildup, Caracas’ reaction and the role played by the far-right opposition.

Source: theAnalysis.news