By REGINA GARCIA CANO, KONSTANTIN TOROPIN and ERIC TUCKER Associated Press
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and flew him out of the country in a stunning military operation early Saturday that plucked a sitting leader from office — the culmination of months of escalating Trump administration pressure on the oil-rich South American nation.
Maduro and his wife, taken overnight from their home on a military base, were aboard a U.S. warship on their way to New York, where they were to face criminal charges.
President Donald Trump said the U.S. planned to run Venezuela until a transition of power can take place. He claimed the American presence was already in place, though there were no immediate signs that the U.S. was running the country.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference where he boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”
Venezuelan state TV broadcast live images of small groups of Maduro supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.
The legal authority for the attack, which echoed the 1990 U.S. invasion of Panama that led to the surrender and seizure of leader Manuel Antonio Noriega, was not immediately clear. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro, who last appeared on state television Friday while meeting with a delegation of Chinese officials in Caracas.
Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on “narco-terrorism” conspiracy charges, but the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, accusing them of a role in narco-terrorism conspiracy.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed in a social media post that the couple would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.” Trump said the couple were aboard the U.S. warship Iwo Jima and headed to New York.
Trump, who was set to speak Saturday morning, posted on his Truth Social account a photo of Maduro blindfolded and in a sweatsuit aboard the ship.
Early morning attack
Early Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through the Venezuelan capital. Maduro’s government accused the United States of attacking civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets.
The attack lasted less than 30 minutes and the explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they’d seen and heard. Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, without giving a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured in Venezuela but he believed none were killed.
Video obtained from Caracas and an unidentified coastal city showed tracers and smoke clouding the landscape as repeated muted explosions illuminated the night sky. Other footage showed cars passing on a highway as blasts illuminated the hills behind them. The videos were verified by The Associated Press.
Smoke was seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas, while another military installation in the capital was without power.
Venezuelan ruling party leader Nahum Fernández told The Associated Press that Maduro and Flores were at their home within the Ft. Tiuna military installation when they were captured.
“That’s where they bombed,” he said. “And, there, they carried out what we could call a kidnapping of the president and the first lady of the country.”
Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. There was no confirmation that had happened, though she did issue a statement after the strike, demanding proof of life for Maduro and his wife.
The strike followed a months-long Trump administration pressure campaign on the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September.
As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35 and the number of people killed at least 115, according to the Trump administration. Trump said that the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and has justified the boat strikes as a necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S.
Maduro has decried the U.S. military operations as a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power.
Some streets in Caracas fill up
Venezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.
Maduro took over when Chávez died in 2013. His 2018 reelection was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating. During the 2024 election, ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
In a demonstration of how polarizing a figure Maduro is, people variously took to the streets to deplore his capture and celebrate it.
At a protest in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas Mayor Carmen Meléndez joined a crowd demanding Maduro’s return.
“Maduro, hold on, the people are rising up!” the crowd chanted. “We are here Nicolás Maduro. If you can hear us, we are here!”
Earlier, armed people and uniformed members of a civilian militia took to the streets of a Caracas neighborhood long considered a stronghold of the ruling party.
In other parts of the city, the streets remained empty hours after the attack, as residents absorbed events. Some areas remained without power, but vehicles moved freely.
“How do I feel? Scared, like everyone,” said Caracas resident Noris Prada, who sat on an empty avenue looking down at his phone. “Venezuelans woke up scared, many families couldn’t sleep.”
In the Chilean capital of Santiago, people waved Venezuelan flags and banging pots and pans as vehicles passed by honking at them.
In Doral, Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the U.S, people wrapped themselves in Venezuelan flags, ate fried snacks and cheered as music played. At one point, the crowd chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”
Questions of legality
The Armed Services committees in both houses of Congress, which have jurisdiction over military matters, have not been notified by the administration of any actions, according to a person familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it.
Lawmakers from both political parties in Congress have raised deep reservations and flat-out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling near the Venezuelan coast and Congress has not specifically approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had seen no evidence that would justify Trump striking Venezuela without approval from Congress and demanded an immediate briefing by the administration on “its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said the military action and seizure of Maduro marks “a new dawn for Venezuela,” saying that “the tyrant is gone.” He posted on X hours after the strike. His boss, Rubio, reposted a post from July that said Maduro “is NOT the President of Venezuela and his regime is NOT the legitimate government.”
Cuba, a supporter of the Maduro government and a longtime adversary of the United States, called for the international community to respond to what President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez called “the criminal attack.”
“Our zone of peace is being brutally assaulted,” he said on X. Iran’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the strikes.
President Javier Milei of Argentina praised the claim by his close ally, Trump, that Maduro had been captured with a political slogan he often deploys to celebrate right-wing advances: “Long live freedom, dammit!”
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Toropin and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela, Lisa Mascaro, Michelle L. Price, Seung Min Kim and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, and Larry Neumeister in South Amboy, New Jersey, contributed.