Jan. 3 (UPI) — The United States early Saturday morning staged a daring “large strike against Venezuela,” during which the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, was captured and flown out of the country, and U.S. officials will now “run the country” during a transitional period there.
President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that Maduro and Maduro’s wife had been captured, and later said at a news conference that they were flown by helicopter to the USS Iwo Jima and will both face charges in the Southern District of New York.
A U.S. military aircraft carrying Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, arrived at the Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, N..Y., at about 5 p.m. EST and are expected to be arraigned on weapons and drug charges in the U.S. District Court for Southern New York sometime next week.
The Trump administration has for months been striking boats off of Venezuela’s coast that are allegedly carrying drugs for distribution in the United States and other countries, and in recent weeks has built an armada in the Caribbean while threatening strikes onshore.
The administration alleges that Maduro, as the head of several gangs in Venezuela, has sent criminals to the United States to sow chaos and trafficked huge amounts of drugs into the country, leading to the deaths of millions of American citizens.
“Maduro and his wife will soon face the full might of American justice and stand trial on American soil.” – President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/aFag9QOkpH— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 3, 2026
At the news conference, held at his Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida, Trump called the mission “one of the most stunning displays of American might and confidence in American history.”
The United States will “run” Venezuela “until such time as a proper transition can take place,” he said, adding that “the overwhelming evidence of [Maduro’s] crimes will be presented in a court of law.”
“I’ve seen what we have and it’s both horrible and breathtaking,” Trump said.
Attorney General Pam Bondi released an unsealed indictment of Maduro on Saturday morning, which outlines the narco-terrorism he is accused of unleashing on the United States.
“For over 25 years, leaders of Venezuela have abused their positions of public trust and corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States,” prosecutors allege in the 25-page indictment.
Maduro is charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States, according to Bondi.
In a post on X, Bondi said that Maduro and his wife “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
After Maduro arrives in New York, he will be held ahead of trial, though Trump and other administration officials did not offer details on where he will be held.
Build-up to extraction
Since September, the Trump administration has built up a 15,000-troop presence in the Caribbean off the shore of Venezuela spread across more than a dozen warships while striking boats that are allegedly smuggling drugs.
The U.S. military in recent weeks also created a naval blockade to prevent Venezuela from shipping its sanctioned oil to other customers, including China, Cuba and Russia. The blockade followed the apprehension of two oil tankers and pursuit of a third.
On Monday, Trump confirmed that the U.S. military had for the first time struck onshore in Venezuela when it hit a dock area that was allegedly used by a Venezuelan gang as a shipping facility for drugs.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said earlier this week, however, that the facility was used to process coca paste into cocaine by a Colombian guerrilla group called the National Liberation Army.
Maduro and Trump spoke by phone last week, according to Trump, who said the Venezuelan president rebuffed encouragement to leave office and the country.
On Thursday, Maduro said he was willing to meet with Trump, work with U.S. agencies to thwart the drug trade in Venezuela and accused the administration of knowingly making false claims that he is involved in drug trafficking.
The CIA started working in Venezuela after Trump in August authorized missions that involved on-the-ground intelligence gathering on Maduro’s “pattern of life” and where he went, as well as stealth drones tracking his movement overhead.
According to The New York Times, some of the intelligence gathering included a contact in Maduro’s own administration who was supplying day-to-day information on the Venezuelan president’s movements — including in the hours before the Delta Force raid.
The raid to apprehend Maduro and his wife had been secretly planned by the military since December, and included members of the elite Delta Force and the CIA, CNN reported.
With the CIA’s help, the joint mission of military and law enforcement agencies carried out the meticulously planned extraction overnight Saturday, the Times reported.
Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were captured while sleeping in their bedroom in the middle of the night, sources told CNN, and Trump added that they were attempting to get to a safe room in the house as they were apprehended.
Trump compared the mission to other attacks in pursuit of terrorist leaders, telling reporters at the news conference that the U.S. military had knocked out power in appropriate areas of Caracas, Venezuela’s capitol, to facilitate the mission.
He added that “not a single American service member was killed” during the mission.
More military action and regime change
Trump, as well as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, noted during the news conference that further action in Venezuela is still possible but may be unlikely.
“The American armada remains poised and in position,” Trump said, adding that what happened to “deposed dictator” Maduro could happen to other members of his administration, which largely has been left in place.
A second “much bigger wave” of strikes had been planned in the case that Venezuela responded to the strikes and extraction of Maduro, but Trump said that most of the country’s defensive capabilities were rendered useless and so the second strike was not launched.
The plan right now, Trump said, is that the United States will run the government — despite Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez and others asserting that Maduro and his administration remain in control of the country — and will specifically look to rehabilitate and expand the oil industry in Venezuela.
“This partnership with Venezuela and the United States … will make the people of Venezuela rich, independent and safe,” Trump said at the news conference. “It will also make the Venezuelan people living in the United States very happy.”
Rodriguez, who is reportedly in Russia — reports that the Russian foreign ministry has called “fake” — but has not confirmed her location, was sworn in as interim president and, in remarks played on Venezuelan state television, called for “the immediate liberation of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores,” NBC reported.
She noted that the main goal of U.S. regime change in Venezuela is for the United States to capture its oil and other natural resources, which follows Trump’s comments at the news conference that U.S. oil companies plan to invest billions of dollars to expand oil extraction there and sell it around the world.
In her statement, Rodriguez also noted that Venezuela has “a government with clarity” and is “willing to have respectful relations” with the U.S. and the Trump administration, the New York Post reported.
In an interview with the Post, Trump said that while the United States will be running the country with its eyes on a democratic election there in the future, U.S. troops will not be on the ground there “if the vice president does what we want.”
During the news conference, Trump also suggested the administration could target other governments in Central and South America, including Mexico, where a significant portion of illegal fentanyl is shipped to the United States from, and Colombia, which is known to be home to production of a significant amount of cocaine shipped to the U.S. and Europe.
Although Rubio mentioned in his remarks at Mar-a-Lago that leaders in Cuba should be concerned, too, Trump told the Post that military action is not on the table because “Cuba is going to fall of its own volition” because it is “doing very poorly.”