Since early January, Venezuela’s former president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to the counts of federal drug trafficking and weapon charges brought against them. But how did this happen? And what does this mean for Venezuela’s government?
In August 2025, the U.S. government increased its military presence in Venezuela under “Operation Southern Spear.” According to the U.S. Southern Command, its mission [was] to “crush illicit activity in the Western Hemisphere.” The following month, the U.S. attacked alleged Venezuelan narcotrafficking ships in the Caribbean. These attacks continued into December, with the Trump administration attacking a facility on the Venezuelan coast, considered to be linked to narcotrafficking. However, in the 2024 United Nations (UN) World Drug Report, Venezuela was not listed as a main source of cocaine shipments. Instead, like the U.S., it was considered a main transit of cocaine shipments. As a result of the continued U.S. strikes against Venezuela, more than 100 deaths have been recorded.
The reasons behind Maduro’s capture were not just connected to Venezuela’s alleged narcotrafficking, but also to end Maduro’s Chavismo. Coined and created by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez—under whom Maduro served as Vice President—Chavismo is a platform promoting federal support for social reform. Using the revenue from Venezuela’s oil reserves, Chávez supported programs that were designed to reduce poverty, improve education and establish social welfare and justice in Venezuela. Yet, these goals did not match the outcomes; as Maduro continued the Chavismo policies, the economy continued to crumble and human rights deteriorated. Nationalist policies led to rigged elections, and U.N. investigators uncovered that Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) has been “implicated in a decade-long pattern of killings, arbitrary detentions, torture and sexual violence targeting protesters and opponents of Maduro.” Therefore, when Maduro and his wife were captured during a raid by the U.S. on Jan. 3, Venezuelan citizens were overwhelmed with a sense of relief and joy.
“I think deposing the dictator was a good thing,” Winston Churchill High School senior Maximus Wang said. “Overall, people are happy that Maduro is out of office. But, I just worry that the U.S. government’s intentions in capturing Maduro were not pure. The U.S. has had a lot of claims in the Venezuela oil industry for a while.”
Since 2006, the United States has been imposing sanctions on the lucrative Venezuelan oil industry. Actions increased further when, in December, the U.S. seized a crude oil tanker, the Motor Tanker Shipper, and approximately 1.8 million barrels of crude oil cargo supplied by a Venezuelan oil company. Now the Trump administration has taken control of Venezuela’s oil sales, and the U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that the U.S. has garnered $1 billion in revenue in Venezuelan oil sales. Additionally, Wright said in a February interview with NBC News that the U.S. has short-term agreements to sell another $5 billion of Venezuela’s crude over the next few months to Europe and U.S. refineries.
In spite of the U.S. presence in Venezuela, for the time being, it is Maduro’s former vice president who is now leading the country. Interim president Delcy Rodríguez has been working with American demands, releasing certain Venezuelan political prisoners and signing into law the privatization of the country’s oil industry to U.S. oil companies such as Chevron. This latter law was intended to end the monopolization by the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA and to increase Venezuela’s profits to address the hyperinflation, poor healthcare system and low full-time employment rates. While those who oppose this law, include 2025 Nobel Peace Prize Winner María Corina Machado, who believes that Venezuela needs to end the decade-long Chavism authoritarian rule and begin a transition to a democracy. Machado, who recently announced that she would be returning to Venezuela after fleeing into exile in December 2025, plans to continue her fight for free elections and upholding the rule of law for all Venezuelans.
Despite the U.S.’s involvement bringing into question its defiance of international law, the U.S. still plans on being involved in the process of post-Maduro Venezuela. For Venezuela, they are trying to manage this crisis one step at a time, and maybe without the U.S. as their helicopter parent. Yet, even throughout this current precariousness, one thing remains certain for a nation that has lived under autocracy for 27 years: there is a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel for Venezuela.
Written by Ava Van Vuren
Photo courtesy of Creative Commons