Where is Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro now? And what happens to him next?

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife have been captured by the United States. The development came after Washington carried out a lightning strike in Venezuela.

US President Donald Trump has now said that America is going to run Venezuela. “We will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a press conference. “We can’t take a chance that someone else takes over Venezuela who doesn’t have the interests of Venezuelans in mind.”

The development came after months of pressure from the Trump administration on the Maduro regime. The United States had built up a naval presence in the region and also conducted strikes on what it claimed were drug boats.

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But where is Maduro? And what next for the toppled Venezuelan dictator?

Where is Maduro?

Maduro is currently at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Trump had announced that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, had been captured by United States forces and flown out of the country. The US aircraft had taken off from nearly two dozen bases after Trump had given the go-ahead around 11:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. The craft took out targets on the ground in Venezuela, particularly air defence systems, which provided cover for the choppers sent to take Maduro and his wife in Caracas.

The choppers with the extraction team reached Maduro’s compound around 2 am and began taking fire. One of the choppers was hit but remained able to fly. This came after US forces captured Maduro and Flores at their home within the Fort Tiuna military installation outside Caracas.  Sources told CNN that the US Army’s elite Delta Force took Maduro and Flores from his bedroom during the raid. They were captured while they were sleeping in the middle of the night. There were no US casualties.

Maduro and his wife surrendered to the US military forces. They were then put on the USS Iwo Jima. Trump posted a picture of the ousted Venezuelan dictator on social media showing him blindfolded and shackled. The ship halted at the Guantanamo Bay military base, known as ‘Gitmo’, which is infamous for previously having abused US prisoners. Maduro and his wife were then put on a plane which arrived at Stewart Air National Guard Base in New York.

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Video showed a plane arriving at the airport around 97 kilometres northwest of New York City, with several US personnel boarding the aircraft after it landed. Maduro has now been taken to Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), where he will be held for the next week. The detention centre is infamous for its poor conditions, violence and chronic understaffing. New York’s only federal jail, it has handled several high-profile cases including Ghislaine Maxwell, R Kelly and Sean Combs. The status of Maduro’s wife remains unclear.

What next for the toppled Venezuelan dictator?

Maduro and his wife will now be arraigned before a New York judge at an unspecified date. Maduro is facing drugs and weapons charges in New York. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused Maduro of being a criminal with links to drug traffickers. During Trump’s first term in 2020, Maduro was charged with “narco-terrorism” and conspiracy to import cocaine, and related charges, in the Southern District of New York.

Maduro and his wife have also been charged with possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the US. According to media reports, the couple have been booked, including having their biometrics, fingerprints and mugshots taken. They would also have had to undergo medical checks. Maduro is expected to make an initial appearance in Manhattan federal court tomorrow (December 5).

Trump gave some details of the operation during a Saturday morning interview on Fox and Friends. Trump said a few US members of the operation were injured, but he believed no one was killed. He said Maduro was “highly guarded” in a presidential palace akin to a “fortress” and that he tried to get to a safe room but wasn’t able to get there in time. Trump said US forces practised the operation ahead of time on a replica building, and that the US turned off “almost all of the lights in Caracas”, although he didn’t detail how they accomplished that.

Situation in Venezuela unclear

It remains unclear how Trump plans to oversee Venezuela. US forces have no control over the country itself, and Maduro’s government appears not only to still be in charge but to have no appetite for cooperating with Washington. Trump did not say who will lead Venezuela when the US cedes control. Maduro’s apparent successor, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, appeared on Venezuelan television on Saturday afternoon with other top officials to decry what she called a kidnapping.

“We demand the immediate release of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores,” Rodríguez said, calling Maduro “the only president of Venezuela”. A Venezuelan court later ordered Rodríguez to assume the position of interim president. In the US, some legal experts questioned the legality of an operation to seize the head of state of a foreign power, and Democrats who said they were misled during recent briefings demanded a plan on what would now follow.

In Venezuela, the streets were mostly calm on Saturday. Soldiers patrolled some parts, and small pro-Maduro crowds gathered in Caracas. Others expressed relief. “I’m happy, I doubted for a moment that it was happening because it’s like a movie,” said merchant Carolina Pimentel, 37, in the city of Maracay.

At his press conference, where he was accompanied by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump did not provide specific answers to repeated questions about how the United States would run Venezuela given that its government and military are still functioning. “The people that are standing right behind me” – such as Rubio and Hegseth – would oversee the country, Trump said.He said he was open to sending US forces into Venezuela. “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” he said.

The removal of Maduro, whom critics called a dictator as he led Venezuela with a heavy hand for more than 12 years, could open a power vacuum in the country, which is bordered by Colombia, Brazil, Guyana and the Caribbean. Trump publicly closed the door on working with opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, widely seen as Maduro’s most credible opponent. Trump said the US has not been in contact with Machado, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year. “She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country,” he said.

With inputs from agencies