U.S. Airstrikes in Venezuela End With Maduro Seized and Flown to New York

The first explosions shook Caracas around 2 a.m. on Jan. 3. Residents in the Venezuelan capital woke to the sound of jets and anti-aircraft fire, watching from apartment balconies as flames rose from military installations on the city’s hillsides and the coast.

By sunrise, the United States said it had carried out more than 150 air sorties across northern Venezuela under an operation code-named Absolute Resolve. Within hours, President Nicolás Maduro — the country’s leader for a decade and the target of a long-standing U.S. narcoterrorism case — was in American custody.

A photo posted by President Donald Trump on his social media platform showed Maduro blindfolded, wearing a gray tracksuit, headphones and a flotation vest aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima. Later that day, U.S. officials confirmed Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, had been flown to New York to face federal charges.

Trump praised the mission as a historic success and a combined law-enforcement and liberation effort. Across the United Nations and foreign capitals, diplomats and legal experts used different language: an act of war and a “dangerous precedent.”

A raid and an air campaign

The overnight operation — airstrikes on a sovereign state followed by a special operations raid to seize its sitting president — is the most dramatic U.S. intervention in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama. It raises immediate questions about Venezuela’s political future and longer-term ones about how far powerful countries can go in using force to enforce domestic criminal indictments abroad.

Maduro’s capture capped a mission that U.S. officials said began in the early hours of Friday, when American aircraft struck air defense sites, barracks and command-and-control nodes in and around Caracas, the coastal city of La Guaira and other northern locations.

Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López announced a state of emergency, denouncing what he called “a military aggression against the homeland.” Venezuelan officials reported damage at several bases and at port facilities in La Guaira. Initial tallies from Venezuelan authorities and independent monitors put the death toll at at least 40 people, including military personnel and civilians, with the number expected to rise.

The Pentagon said two U.S. service members were wounded. American officials said they took steps to avoid civilian casualties and limited strikes to military and dual-use targets, a claim that could not be independently verified as emergency services dug through rubble in several neighborhoods.

Under the cover of the bombing campaign, U.S. special operations forces moved into Caracas. According to U.S. officials briefed on the mission, an elite unit from the Army’s Delta Force, supported by helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, stormed a compound identified as a Maduro safe house. After a brief firefight, they detained Maduro and Flores and moved them to waiting aircraft, which flew to the Iwo Jima positioned off Venezuela’s coast.

From there, the couple was transferred to a U.S. military aircraft and flown to Stewart Air National Guard Base in New York’s Hudson Valley. They are expected to appear in the Southern District of New York on a 2020 indictment that charges Maduro and several current and former Venezuelan officials with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine trafficking and related weapons offenses.

The charges and the White House rationale

The case, announced in March 2020, accuses Maduro of leading a criminal partnership with Colombia’s former FARC guerrillas known as the Cartel of the Suns. U.S. prosecutors allege the group conspired for two decades to “flood the United States with cocaine” and to use narcotics “as a weapon against America,” language repeated in recent days by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“The Venezuelan people have been held hostage by a narco-terrorist regime,” Bondi said in remarks following the operation. “Today, the head of that cartel will finally face justice in a U.S. court.”

Trump, appearing at his Mar-a-Lago resort, framed the mission as both law enforcement and liberation.

“We brought to justice one of the world’s most notorious drug traffickers, and we freed a nation from a brutal dictator,” he said. “The United States will help run Venezuela until a safe, proper and judicious transition is in place, and our great oil companies will be very strongly involved in rebuilding their energy industry.”

He added that the intervention “won’t cost us anything” because, he said, Venezuela’s oil wealth would “reimburse” the United States.

The administration did not seek advance authorization from Congress. White House lawyers and allied lawmakers argue the strikes fall under the president’s Article II commander-in-chief powers and are supported by existing authorizations for the use of military force against foreign terrorist organizations, citing U.S. moves in recent years to label some drug cartels as terrorist entities.

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a Republican who has previously criticized executive overreach on war powers, said after speaking with officials that the operation “likely falls under the president’s inherent authority … to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack,” though he called for Congress to be briefed in full.

Many Democrats and some Republicans rejected that reasoning. Several lawmakers described the assault as the start of a war undertaken without their consent.

“There was no imminent threat, no consultation with Congress and no clear limiting principle to this doctrine,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said. “If we can bomb a capital city to serve an arrest warrant, we are in very dangerous territory.”

International law alarm and the Panama precedent

International legal specialists voiced similar concerns. The U.N. Charter prohibits the use of force except in self-defense or with Security Council approval. Venezuela had not launched an armed attack on the United States, and there was no Security Council mandate for military action.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed” by the escalation and warned that the U.S. actions “constitute a dangerous precedent.”

“I am particularly concerned that the rules of international law, including the United Nations Charter, have not been respected,” he said in Geneva, calling for restraint and respect for Venezuelan sovereignty.

Scholars interviewed in recent days have broadly agreed that the strikes violate Article 2(4) of the charter, which bars the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Some have described the operation as a likely “illegal use of force” or even a “crime of aggression.”

Under U.S. law, however, the manner in which a defendant is brought before a court rarely affects a judge’s jurisdiction. In past cases, including the 1989 seizure of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega during the U.S. invasion of Panama, American courts have upheld prosecutions even when the defendant was forcibly abducted abroad.

The comparison to Panama has surfaced frequently since Friday. Then-President George H.W. Bush sent some 27,000 U.S. troops into Panama in December 1989 in an operation justified in part by Noriega’s drug-trafficking indictment and threats to U.S. citizens. Noriega was captured, brought to Miami and later convicted.

In Venezuela, the terrain is different. The United States has no treaty bases or formal occupation rights. Venezuela is larger and more populous than Panama and has closer military and economic ties to Russia and China. There is also no single opposition figure recognized internationally as president-in-waiting under U.S. protection, as there was in Panama.

A power vacuum in Caracas

Inside Venezuela, the sudden removal of the country’s top leader has not produced a clear transfer of power.

Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, one of Maduro’s closest allies, appeared on state television shortly after the strikes to denounce what she called the “kidnapping” of the president.

“They have abducted our president in an act of piracy and state terrorism,” she said, insisting Maduro remained the country’s legitimate leader and demanding “proof of life” from Washington.

Venezuelan institutions controlled by the ruling party have directed Rodríguez to serve as interim president in Maduro’s absence. Defense Minister Padrino López has pledged that the armed forces will form a “wall of resistance” against any foreign occupation.

So far, there are no confirmed large-scale defections from the military’s upper ranks. Analysts say the core security apparatus — from the armed forces to intelligence services and pro-government militias — appears to be holding.

From exile, opposition leader María Corina Machado offered a starkly different message. She said “what had to happen is happening” and urged security forces to recognize Edmundo González Urrutia, whom the opposition and many observers say won Venezuela’s contested 2024 presidential election, as commander in chief.

“This is the moment to enforce the popular mandate,” she said in a video address. “The armed forces must stand with the constitution and with the Venezuelan people, not with a regime that has lost all legitimacy.”

On the streets, reactions have reflected the country’s deep polarization. In some poorer neighborhoods known as government strongholds, demonstrators waved Venezuelan flags and shouted slogans against “Yankee imperialism.” In opposition-leaning districts, residents set off fireworks and cheered reports of Maduro’s capture.

At the same time, long lines formed outside supermarkets and ATMs as people rushed to buy food and withdraw cash, fearing shortages, looting or further strikes.

Regional and global fallout

Regional governments have also split. Argentina’s libertarian president, Javier Milei, praised the operation on social media, declaring “la libertad avanza” — “liberty advances” — and calling Maduro’s removal “a step forward for the free world.” Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa welcomed what he described as a blow against “narco-Chavista criminals.”

Others were sharply critical. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called the raid “a very serious affront to sovereignty” and said it recalled “the darkest moments of U.S. interference” in Latin America. Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned “bombing with missiles” and ordered troops to reinforce his country’s border amid fears of a new refugee wave.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum and Chile’s President Gabriel Boric both stressed that while they did not recognize Maduro’s 2024 reelection, they opposed any solution that violated international law.

Russia and China condemned the strikes as a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty. Moscow signaled it would push for a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding the release of Maduro and Flores, though any such measure would likely face a U.S. veto. Beijing said it was “deeply shocked” by the use of force and warned against “hegemonic behavior,” advising Chinese citizens to avoid travel to Venezuela.

European Union officials urged restraint and respect for the U.N. Charter. Leaders in France and Spain reiterated that they did not consider Maduro’s 2024 mandate legitimate but said that did not justify unilateral military action.

Oil markets watch for disruption

Oil markets reacted cautiously. Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA and industry sources said key production and refining facilities were not hit and that operations were “running normally” immediately after the strikes. But U.S. sanctions, a naval buildup and the threat of further escalation have already choked exports, forcing crude into floating storage.

Analysts estimate that a complete loss of Venezuela’s roughly 500,000 to 700,000 barrels per day of exports could raise global prices by a few dollars per barrel, a manageable shock given spare capacity in other producing states. Still, Trump’s pledge that U.S. energy companies will be “very strongly involved” in Venezuela’s oil industry has fueled accusations by critics that access to vast reserves, rather than drugs, is driving policy.

What comes next

The road ahead is uncertain. The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to meet in emergency session in the coming days. In Washington, lawmakers are demanding briefings and signaling possible efforts to claw back war powers. In Caracas, the absence of Maduro may intensify struggles within the ruling movement and between government hard-liners and opposition leaders over who speaks for the state.

For now, the image of a blindfolded Venezuelan president aboard an American warship and the burned-out shells of buildings in Caracas capture a stark reality: to enforce a domestic criminal indictment against a foreign leader, the United States has been willing to launch a large-scale military operation. How other governments respond — and whether they seek to claim similar rights — could determine whether this moment remains an extraordinary exception or becomes a template for future confrontations.