President Maduro of Venezuela deposed by U.S. military

Direct interference in foreign governments is a hallmark of the United States. It continued on Jan. 3 when the U.S. military successfully targeted Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, and arrested its authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, on grounds of fueling drug trafficking into the U.S.

The pair now awaits trial in a New York court. In his first court appearance on Jan. 5, Maduro pleaded not guilty. His lawyer defended that being the president of his country provides him a degree of legal immunity and not grounds for a foreign military to forcibly detain him. 

The U.S. accuses the Maduro government of colluding with drug cartels to funnel as much as 250 tons of cocaine into the U.S. The prosecution will argue that Maduro is an illegitimate president, citing claims of election fraud in 2024. Maduro will return to court on March 17.

On Feb. 20, 2025, the Department of State, led by Marco Rubio, designated eight Latin American transnational organizations as foreign terrorist organizations. Among them is Tren de Aragua, a group based in Venezuela with confirmed cells across Latin America. 

Trump claimed numerous times since the 2024 election that Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S. are affiliated with these organizations, committing violent crimes against Americans and that the Venezuelan government supports them. However, this contradicts intelligence reports of any coordination between these organizations and Maduro’s government. Maduro’s government said the same.

Although drug trafficking is generally difficult to measure, Venezuela is not known as a producer of fentanyl. Instead, the Venezuela branch of Transparency International finds that Venezuela is a major transit facilitator for cocaine. 

Yet, even then, most of the world’s cocaine is produced in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, and goes through Venezuela to Europe. Most headed to the U.S. travels through the Pacific Ocean and Mexico, not the Caribbean. Venezuela is estimated to have trafficked 639 tons of Colombian cocaine in 2024 alone, amounting to revenues of $8.2 billion. 

Contrary to U.S. intelligence, Transparency International finds that Venezuelan officials have extensive involvement in narcotrafficking for their own benefit.

In August 2025, the U.S. military, under the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, began amassing off the Venezuelan coast and sinking boats in the Caribbean, claiming they were operated by Tren de Aragua to smuggle fentanyl to the U.S. from Venezuela. “Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives,” Trump claimed, although the administration didn’t release evidence of the vessels being involved.

Since Sept. 2, 2025, 35 known strikes have killed 115 people. These included somewhat expanded operations to sink boats in the Pacific Ocean, seizing oil tankers and blockading oil from going in and out of Venezuela. In October 2025, Trump confirmed land operations on Venezuelan soil were in consideration.

The interim president is Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, a career politician and staunch supporter of Maduro. President Trump will not pursue further military action if Rodríguez cooperates with U.S. demands.

One less dictator in the world ought to be welcomed, though how it was carried out is another conversation. The question now is whether Venezuela can truly turn itself around after years of corruption. 

Venezuela should be incredibly wealthy with the world’s largest oil reserves. Instead, the previous government led by Hugo Chávez lost over $300 billion from corruption and mismanagement. Maduro committed severe corruption and embezzlement as production dropped following U.S. sanctions. 

Overall, the country lost thousands of skilled workers and billions in revenues that should have been responsibly reinvested into the economy. Much of the infrastructure has fallen into disrepair. It used to be one of the top producers in the 1990s. Now, Venezuela produces 1% of the world’s oil.

With Maduro gone, the U.S. took control of its exports to ensure stability. Although Rodríguez intends to pass significant reforms, the state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., still has its monopoly, and national laws discourage new competitors in the market.

Human Rights Watch notes that the 2024 election results, which saw Maduro re-elected by a large margin, were denounced by international organizations. Journalists, political opponents, peaceful protestors and human rights defenders are often arrested and persecuted. Most of the population lives in poverty, and the judiciary is no longer independent. 

Freedom House cites similar issues, giving it only a 13 out of 100 on its 2025 Freedom in the World report, a far fall from when it scored 30 in 2017.

The international response to how the U.S. conducted Maduro’s detainment is, at best, testy. World leaders like Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez and Chilean President Gabriel Boric have called for a respect of international law. Traditional U.S. adversaries like Cuba, China and Russia have all protested the deposition. 

Maduro’s authoritarianism over the last 12 years has created an exodus of Venezuelans abroad, an estimated 7.7 million people. Following Maduro’s arrest, thousands of Venezuelans in Argentina, Spain and Peru gathered with optimism for the future.