Trump says U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, flew him out of the country
President Donald Trump announced today that U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and flew him out of the country, a stunning turn in a 12-year rule defined by economic collapse, political repression and a standoff with Washington. Trump also said Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, was taken into custody.
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Maduro, 63, a socialist and the handpicked successor to the late Hugo Chávez, had long been accused by domestic opponents and Western governments of dismantling Venezuela’s democracy and staging sham elections to maintain power. His contested 2018 re-election hardened global opposition, with the United States and several allies refusing to recognize the result.
Venezuela’s pro-democracy movement and human rights advocates cast the moment as the culmination of years of pressure on an increasingly authoritarian state. Their case was sharpened in 2025 when opposition leader María Corina Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize, an award her supporters said underscored the costs of resistance under Maduro’s security apparatus.
Maduro’s defiance of U.S. pressure was a hallmark of his tenure. Last October, after Trump said he had authorized CIA operations in Venezuela, Maduro railed against “demonic powers” that sought the country’s vast oil reserves. Washington, in turn, escalated pressure: In August it doubled its reward for Maduro’s arrest to $50 million over alleged ties to drug trafficking and criminal groups, while broadening sanctions and boosting military presence in the southern Caribbean. U.S. forces also conducted more than two dozen strikes on vessels it said were involved in drug trafficking in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Rights monitors have described a yearslong pattern of state abuses. A United Nations fact-finding mission reported last month that the Bolivarian National Guard committed serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity in suppressing dissent for more than a decade. Protests against Maduro’s government have repeatedly turned deadly, including a 2017 wave that left 125 people dead and demonstrations after his 2019 inauguration in which dozens more were killed. Following the 2024 election, U.N. investigators said authorities escalated repressive tactics to crush largely peaceful protests, leaving more than two dozen dead and leading to 2,400 arrests.
Even as political tensions deepened, Venezuela’s economy cratered. Once one of Latin America’s wealthiest nations, the country endured a prolonged collapse that fueled an exodus of about 7.7 million people. In 2024, a U.N. special rapporteur reported that nearly 82% of Venezuelans were living in poverty and 53% in extreme poverty, unable to afford basic foodstuffs. Maduro rejected accusations of economic mismanagement and framed sweeping U.S. and European sanctions as an “economic war” aimed at toppling the Chávez-era socialist project and seizing Venezuela’s oil.
Maduro’s ascent from bus driver to president traced the arc of Chavismo. Born into a working-class family on Nov. 23, 1962, and the son of a trade-union leader, he backed Chávez after the army officer’s failed 1992 coup and helped rally support for his release from prison. After Chávez won the 1998 election, Maduro took a legislative seat, rose to head the National Assembly and served as foreign minister, using oil-financed outreach to court developing nations. He was narrowly elected president in 2013 after Chávez died from cancer, but he never matched his mentor’s charisma.
As inflation surged in 2013, Maduro sent troops to seize appliance stores and force fire-sale prices — a populist move that briefly lifted his standing ahead of mayoral elections. The economy soon unraveled as oil prices fell and state subsidies proved unsustainable, bringing bread lines, empty shelves and spiraling prices. In 2018, militants launched an assassination attempt with explosives-laden drones during a Caracas rally, prompting Maduro to curtail public appearances and live broadcasts.
Throughout his rule, Maduro leaned on a tight inner circle. Flores, a seasoned political operator who served as attorney general and head of parliament, was widely seen as a power broker with influence rivaling her husband’s. Maduro frequently derided opponents as “fascist demons,” embraced theatrics and even had an appeal to Trump — “yes peace, not war” — remixed into an electronica track that became a symbol of his defiance.
Maduro consistently denied U.S. allegations of drug trafficking and corruption, and rebuffed claims of political persecution. He cast himself as a bulwark against imperialism, insisting that his government defended national sovereignty against foreign meddling.
Details of the operation Trump announced were not immediately available from the source material. But the claim marks a dramatic inflection point for Venezuela after years of crisis — and leaves urgent questions about the country’s political transition, the fate of detained opponents and the durability of institutions reshaped by a decade of concentrated power.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
