Photo Courtesy White House
In the early hours of Jan. 3, Americans were stunned to learn that U.S. forces stormed into the capital city of Venezuela and collected President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia to face charges in New York.
Per the account of U.S. officials, there were no casualties in the effort, dubbed “Operation Absolute Resolve.” The Trump Administration gave no notification to Congress beforehand, but from what has been seen so far, most Venezuelans in that nation and abroad were appreciative of the operation.
“We are enforcing American laws with regards to oil sanctions. We have sanctioned entities; we go to court, we get a warrant, we seize those boats with oil. And that will continue,” said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio during an interview with CBS News. “We continue to reserve the right to take strikes against drug boats that are bringing drugs towards the United States that are being operated by transnational criminal organizations, including the Cartel de los Soles. Of course, their leader – the leader of that cartel – is now in U.S. custody and facing U.S. justice in the Southern District of New York, and that’s Nicolás Maduro. So we made big progress in that regard.”
Nicolás Maduro Moros became president of Venezuela following Hugo Chavez’s death in 2013 and declared victory in a presidential election in 2018. In 2019, the National Assembly of Venezuela invoked the Venezuelan constitution and declared that Maduro had usurped power and was not the president of Venezuela. Since 2019, more than 50 countries, including the United States, refused to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s head of state.
In the July 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, Maduro again declared himself the victor despite evidence to the contrary. The United States joined many other countries in refusing to recognize Maduro as the legitimately elected president in the 2024 contested election.
Maduro helped manage and ultimately lead the Cartel de los Soles, a Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials. As he gained power in Venezuela, Maduro participated in a corrupt and violent narco-terrorism conspiracy with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Maduro negotiated multi-ton shipments of FARC-produced cocaine; directed the Cartel of the Suns to provide military-grade weapons to the FARC; coordinated with narcotics traffickers in Honduras and other countries to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking; and solicited assistance from FARC leadership in training an unsanctioned militia group that functioned, in essence, as an armed forces unit for the Cartel.
In March 2020, Maduro was charged in the Southern District of New York for narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
After initially offering a reward offer of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Maduro in 2020, the Department of State on Jan. 10, 2025, increased the reward offer to up to $25 million. On Aug. 7, 2025, the Department announced the further increase in the reward offer to up to $50 million after the Department of Treasury sanctioned Cartel de los Soles as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist on July 25, 2025.
As leader of Cartel of the Suns, Maduro was the first target in the history of the Narcotics Rewards Program with a reward offer exceeding $25 million. There is no word as to if anyone in Venezuela might have covertly assisted American troops in extracting Maduro from the country.
