President Donald Trump said today that U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and flew him out of the country, a stunning turn in a tumultuous chapter that has defined Venezuela’s political and economic crisis for more than a decade. Trump added that Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, was also apprehended.
Maduro, 63, the handpicked successor to the late Hugo Chávez, has ruled Venezuela for more than 12 years and faced sustained accusations of authoritarianism, human rights abuses and sham elections. The United States, Venezuela’s opposition and numerous Western governments did not recognize his 2018 re-election.
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Today’s announcement follows months of escalating U.S. pressure. In August, Washington doubled its reward for Maduro’s arrest to $50 million over alleged drug trafficking ties and links to criminal groups. Trump said last October he had authorized CIA operations in Venezuela, and in recent months the U.S. military surged assets to the southern Caribbean, carried out more than two dozen strikes on vessels it said were tied to drug trafficking in the Pacific and Caribbean, and tightened sanctions on Maduro’s inner circle.
A U.N. fact-finding mission reported last month that Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard committed serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity over more than a decade targeting political opponents. Maduro denied the allegations, calling them part of a longtime “imperialist” campaign to crush the socialist movement launched by Chávez and seize Venezuela’s oil wealth. He cast U.S. and allied sanctions as an “economic war” against his government.
Under Maduro, Venezuela’s economic collapse accelerated, triggering an exodus of about 7.7 million people across Latin America and beyond. A U.N. special rapporteur reported in 2024 that nearly 82% of Venezuelans lived in poverty, with 53% in extreme poverty and unable to afford basic food.
Maduro’s rule was marked by waves of protest and crackdowns. In 2017, months of demonstrations left 125 people dead amid allegations of torture, arbitrary detentions and abuse by security forces. After his 2019 inauguration to a second term, more protests erupted and dozens more died. Following the 2024 election, the U.N. reported a new escalation of repressive tactics against peaceful demonstrators, with more than two dozen deaths and roughly 2,400 arrests.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado received the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, a symbolic rebuke of Maduro’s government and a moment that galvanized Venezuela’s fractured anti-government movement. Maduro, for his part, cultivated a defiant persona—a salsa enthusiast with a flair for theatrics who branded opponents “fascist demons” and once turned his message to Trump—“yes peace, not war”—into an electronic remix.
Born into a working-class family on Nov. 23, 1962, and the son of a union leader, Maduro worked as a bus driver when Chávez led a failed coup in 1992. He championed Chávez’s release and, after Chávez’s 1998 election, rose quickly: legislator, president of the National Assembly, then foreign minister. He won the presidency in 2013 after Chávez’s death from cancer, but lacked his mentor’s charisma and inherited a fragile, oil-dependent economy.
As oil prices fell and shortages deepened, Maduro resisted unwinding Chávez-era subsidies and controls. In 2013, with inflation spiking, he ordered troops to occupy appliance stores and force “fire-sale” prices ahead of municipal elections—moves that buoyed short-term popularity but compounded long-term strains. In 2018, militants attempted to assassinate him with explosives-laden drones during a Caracas rally, prompting him to reduce spontaneous public appearances.
Flores, a powerful figure in her own right and a former attorney general and parliamentary chief, was widely seen as a key power broker throughout Maduro’s tenure. Trump said she was captured alongside her husband today.
Maduro long rejected U.S. accusations of corruption and drug smuggling. “Those demonic powers that aim to sink their claws into Venezuela to steal our oil,” he said in a broadside after Trump last year authorized covert operations in the country.
Trump’s announcement caps a dramatic escalation in U.S.-Venezuela confrontation and signals the end of Maduro’s era—one that reshaped Venezuela’s institutions, upended its economy and sent millions fleeing abroad. Details about next steps for Venezuela’s leadership and institutions were not immediately available.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
