By Susan Heavey and Jana Winter
New York — Venezuela’s toppled leader Nicolás Maduro was in a New York detention centre on Sunday awaiting drug charges after President Donald Trump ordered an audacious raid to capture him, saying the US would take control of the oil-producing nation.
The image of the 63-year-old Maduro blindfolded and handcuffed en route to the US has stunned Venezuelans and was Washington’s most controversial intervention in Latin America since the invasion of Panama 37 years ago.
Maduro, who wished his captors a “Happy New Year” on arrival, is due to appear in a Manhattan court on Monday.
With memories of painful US 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.
On Sunday, Venezuelan defence minister Gen Vladimir Padrino said a large part of Maduro’s security team was killed in the US raid. He also backed the declaration of vice-president Delcy Rodriguez as interim president, and said the armed forces have been activated across the country to guarantee sovereignty.
Interior minister Diosdado Cabello said the country’s government would stay unified behind Maduro. “Here, the unity of the revolutionary force is more than guaranteed, and here there is only one president, whose name is Nicolás Maduro Moros. Let no-one fall for the enemy’s provocations,” he said.
Trump said after the raid the US would for now manage the South American nation of about 30-million people plus its oil reserves, the largest in the world.
“We will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” he told a livestreamed press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort, hailing the extraordinary extraction of Maduro just as he was at the door of a safe room.
He said Rodriguez had been sworn in and was being co-operative.
To the disappointment of Venezuela’s opposition and diaspora, Trump has given short shrift to the idea of 58-year-old opposition leader Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado taking over, saying she lacked support. Machado was banned from standing in Venezuela’s 2024 election and has said her ally Edmundo Gonzalez, 76, who overwhelmingly won that vote according to the opposition and some international observers, should now take the presidency.
Once one of the most prosperous nations in Latin America, Venezuela’s economy nosedived further under Maduro, sending about one in five Venezuelans abroad in one of the world’s biggest exoduses.
They were largely jubilant at the exit of Maduro, whose security forces repeatedly crushed opposition protests. The former union leader, bus driver and foreign minister was the dying Hugo Chavez’s handpicked successor as president in 2013.
“We are all happy that the dictatorship has fallen and that we have a free country,” Khaty Yanez, who lives in the Chilean capital Santiago, said.
Trump says Maduro masterminded the flow of drugs into the US and was illegitimately in power due to vote-rigging. He denies those claims and top officials in Caracas have demanded his release, accusing the US of an imperial lust for Venezuela’s oil and mineral riches.
‘Never again’
Because of her connections with the private sector and deep knowledge of oil, the country’s top source of revenue, Rodriguez has long been considered the most pragmatic member of Maduro’s inner circle. But she publicly contradicted Trump’s claim she is willing to work with the US.
“There is only one president in Venezuela, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” said Rodriguez, in a defiant message to the US despite Trump’s assertions she was open to working with them. “We will never again be a colony of any empire.”
Trump said Rodriguez may pay a bigger price than Maduro “if she doesn’t do what’s right”, according to an interview with The Atlantic magazine on Sunday.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on ABC’s This Week that Venezuela’s next leader should be aligned with US interests. Those include keeping Venezuela’s oil industry out of the hands of US adversaries and stopping drug trafficking. He cited an ongoing US blockade on tankers under sanctions as leverage.
“We have a quarantine on their oil,” Rubio said. “That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interest of the Venezuelan people are met.”
US Special Forces swooped in on helicopters to seize Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, under darkness in the early hours of Saturday after strikes on military installations in Caracas and elsewhere.
While many Western nations oppose Maduro and say he stole the 2024 election, there were many calls for the US to respect international law and resolve the crisis diplomatically.
There were also questions over the legality of seizing a foreign head of state. Democrats said they were misled at recent Congress briefings and demanded a plan for what is to follow.
Trump said earlier major US oil companies would move back into Venezuela and refurbish badly degraded oil infrastructure, a process experts said could take years.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” he added.
A plane carrying Maduro landed near New York City on Saturday night, and he was helicoptered to the city before being taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. In a hallway at the US Drug Enforcement Administration, he wished those around him a “goodnight, Happy New Year”.
Indicted in 2020 on charges including narco-terrorism conspiracy, Maduro is expected to make an initial appearance in Manhattan federal court on Monday.
The UN Security Council planned to meet on Monday to discuss the US move, which UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres described as “a dangerous precedent”.
Russia and China, both major backers of Venezuela, criticised the US “China firmly opposes such hegemonic behaviour by the US,” China’s foreign ministry said.
Pope Leo said he was following events with a “soul full of concern” and called for Venezuela to stay independent and respectful of rights.
“The good of the beloved Venezuelan people must prevail over every other consideration,” the pope told pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square during his weekly Sunday prayer.
Maduro opponents in Venezuela have been wary of celebrating and security seemed, if anything, lighter than usual on Sunday. Despite the nervous mood, in some places cars were moving, bakeries and coffee shops were open, and joggers and cyclists were out like a normal Sunday morning.
The US advised airlines that its Caribbean airspace curbs were ending and flights could resume, following the cancellation of hundreds of flights after the attack on Venezuela.
It is unclear just how Trump plans to oversee Venezuela. His comments about an open-ended military presence in Venezuela echoed the rhetoric around past invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which ended in American withdrawals after years of costly occupation and thousands of US casualties.
A US occupation “won’t cost us a penny” because the US would be reimbursed from “money coming out of the ground”, Trump said, referring to Venezuela’s oil.
Trump’s focus on foreign affairs fuels Democrats’ criticism and also runs the risk of alienating some supporters who have backed his “America First” agenda and oppose foreign interventions.
Update: January 4 2026
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