Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured by U.S. forces in a dramatic, early-morning raid Saturday inside Caracas announced by missile fire, explosions and an engineered blackout.
Maduro, who along with his wife faces charges in the U.S. of running a large drug cartel out of the presidency in Caracas, arrived Saturday afternoon at Stewart Air National Guard Base in New York.
Drones, helicopters and fighter planes buzzed through Venezuelan airspace. U.S. troops raided a bunker of a compound. And over the course of about five hours — starting with President Donald Trump’s “Go” order from Palm Beach and ending with Maduro detained on a U.S. warship in the Caribbean — the U.S. military toppled a dug-in ruler accused of trafficking cocaine into the United States.
The attack — planned for weeks — initially played out over social media, where Venezuelans posted video of explosions in different regions of the country. By Saturday afternoon, in a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine gave a detailed breakdown of the hemisphere-rattling military operation, calling it “the culmination of months of planning and rehearsal.”
Well ahead of Saturday’s strikes, Caine said U.S. intelligence spent months detailing Maduro’s habits and movements to “understand how he moved, where he lived, where he traveled, what he ate, what he wore, what were his pets.”
By early December, the intelligence gathering was complete, he said, and military teams were ready for an order from the president.
Caine said the military had been prepared to strike Venezuela “over the weeks through Christmas and New Years” but were delayed by the weather. Trump told Fox News earlier on Saturday that he had wanted to give the order days ago. “We were going to do this four days ago, but the weather was not perfect,” Trump said. “We were going to do this four days ago, three days ago, two days ago — and then, all of a sudden, it opened up and we said ‘Go.’”
Trump issued the order to capture Maduro and Flores at 10:46 p.m., according to Caine. A message from the president was then transmitted throughout the military branches: “Good luck and godspeed.” Aircraft began launching from 20 different military bases “on land and sea across the Western Hemisphere,” Caine said. More than 150 bombers, aircraft, fighter planes and helicopters took flight. He said all the branches of the military were involved in the effort. Helicopters carried a team focused on Maduro’s extraction, including law enforcement, according to Caine, with a mandate to “minimize the harm” to Maduro and his wife so they could be arrested and stand trial in the U.S. As the extraction team started flying into Caracas, U.S. fighter jets, bombers and remotely piloted drones provided cover and “began dismantling and disabling air defense systems in Venezuela, employing weapons to ensure the safe passage of the helicopters into the target area,” Caine said.
The U.S. helicopters carrying the extraction team descended on Maduro’s compound around 2 a.m. local Caracas time. The helicopters came under fire, according to Caine, and one was hit but remained flyable. Trump said earlier on Fox News that U.S. special operations forces entered Caracas under near-total darkness after power was cut across much of the city. The target, he said, was a residence “more like a fortress than a house,” with steel doors, reinforced corridors and a sealed inner “safety space.” U.S. forces were prepared to breach that inner room using heavy cutting equipment, Trump said, but the operation moved faster than anticipated. Trump said he watched the operation unfold live from his home in Mar-a-Lago.
“He didn’t make it to that area,” Trump said, referring to Maduro. “We were prepared.”
Maduro and his wife were extracted by helicopter and flown offshore to the USS Iwo Jima, a U.S. Navy assault ship operating as part of a larger flotilla in the Caribbean, Trump said. From there, they are being transferred to the United States. The extraction team, with Maduro and his wife in tow, were back over the water by 3:29 a.m., about five hours after Trump first issued the order. U.S. forces took fire, but no military members died in the action, Caine said. “There were multiple self-defense engagements as the force began to withdraw out of Venezuela,” he said.
Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab told local television Saturday morning that the U.S. strikes killed Venezuelans, but the exact number is not clear.
According to Trump, the operation followed several attempts to persuade Maduro to step down peacefully. He said he personally spoke with Maduro and offered what he described as “off-ramps” — surrender and relinquishment of power. “I told him, you have to give up,” Trump said. “It was close. But in the end, he didn’t.”
Trump said the decision to proceed was driven by what he described as the scale of the U.S. drug crisis. He argued that U.S. maritime operations have sharply reduced drug shipments by sea and said Maduro’s capture was part of a broader campaign to disrupt trafficking networks.
Trump said Maduro had little remaining support inside Venezuela and claimed that some people were seen in the streets waving American flags following the operation.
“If they stay loyal, the future is really bad for them,” Trump said of the regime’s remaining officials. “If they convert, that’s different.”
Under Venezuela’s constitution, the vice president would assume power if Maduro is removed.
During the press conference mid-day Saturday, Trump suggested his administration plans to work with Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who he said was sworn in as president after Maduro’s capture and spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio this morning.
He also spoke extensively about U.S. plans to build infrastructure to extract Venezuelan oil and remain in administration of the country for the foreseeable future. “We’re going to run it essentially until such time as a proper transition can take place,” Trump told reporters gathered around noon at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
