The United States conducted an overnight military strike on Venezuela on Saturday, Jan. 3, President Donald Trump said, and has captured the nation’s leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
The operation marks a dramatic escalation of action against Venezuela after months of rising tensions and military buildup by the U.S.
Here’s what we know.
Trump said during a news conference on Saturday, Jan. 3, that the United States will “run” Venezuela until “we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”
The president did not immediately provide additional details on how the U.S. planned to manage the sovereign nation. He also did not provide a timeline as to how soon and how long the U.S. will run the country.
“I’d like to do it quickly, but it takes a period of time,” Trump said during a new conference at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. “We’re rebuilding. We have to rebuild their whole infrastructure.”
In a social media post Saturday, Jan. 3, Trump described a “large scale strike” against Venezuela.
Images from within the country showed explosions, burning vehicles and plumes of smoke rising over the capital, Caracas, and other locations. Witnesses reported the sounds of low-flying jets. The extent of damage and casualties from the strikes was not immediately known.
Members of the Army’s elite Delta Force led the raid to capture Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, according to CBS News. Considered the Army’s equivalent to the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, Delta Force soldiers are trained to conduct counterterrorism operations and raids against important targets.
Gen. Dan Caine, an Air Force general who serves as Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recounted the raid in a timeline during a news conference at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago on Saturday.
He said that military assets for the mission were in place in December, but that the the attack was delayed until the weather “broke just enough” and in order to “minimize the potential for civilian harm and maximize the element of surprise and minimize the harm” to Maduro.
Trump gave the go-ahead order at 10:46 p.m. ET, Caine said. (Caracas is one hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time.) The raid involved aircraft and troops from 20 different bases “across the Western Hemisphere,” the four-star general said. The assault force landed at Maduro’s compound via helicopter at 1:01 a.m. ET.
The raid force captured Maduro and his wife while they were trying to flee to a safe room in the compound, Trump said in a phone interview with “Fox & Friends” earlier Saturday morning.
Trump told Fox News Maduro and Flores were being held on the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship, in the Caribbean.
Maduro, 63, has been the president of Venezuela since 2013. He was the hand-picked successor of the country’s former leader, Hugo Chávez, and was narrowly elected president following Chávez’s death.
His administration has overseen a spectacular economic collapse characterized by hyperinflation and chronic shortages. His rule became best known for allegedly rigged elections, food shortages and rights abuses, including harsh crackdowns on protests in 2014 and 2017. Millions of Venezuelans emigrated abroad.
He was sworn in for a third term in January 2025 following a 2024 election that was widely condemned by international observers and the opposition as fraudulent.
Allegations of drug trafficking and corruption have been leveled at Maduro and his inner circle for years. During Trump’s first term, Maduro and several of his top officials and military generals were charged with narcoterrorism and collaborating with FARC, a Colombian leftist guerrilla group, to “flood” the United States with cocaine.
In July, the Trump administration sanctioned the so-called Cartel de los Soles, which it defined as a “Venezuela-based criminal group headed by Nicolás Maduro Moros and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals in the Maduro regime.” The administration designated it as a foreign terrorist organization.
Available data from federal agencies and the United Nations show Venezuela is not a significant source of drugs flowing into the U.S., especially fentanyl. And experts say the Cartel de los Soles does not actually exist as any kind of organized drug cartel.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a social media post on X that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York. Maduro faces charges of “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States,” Bondi wrote. Bondi did not specify the charges against Flores.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee said in a post on X that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told him Maduro would “stand trial on criminal charges in the United States.”
“(Rubio) informed me that Nicolás Maduro has been arrested by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States, and that the kinetic action we saw tonight was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant,” Lee wrote.
In a second post, Lee said Rubio “anticipates no further action in Venezuela now that Maduro is in U.S. custody.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton said Saturday morning, Jan. 3, that he’d spoken to Marco Rubio and confirmed that Maduro is in U.S. custody and will face criminal charges.
Maduro and his wife are expected to arrive Saturday, Jan. 3, at New York Stewart International Airport in Orange County, New York, about 50 miles north of Manhattan, according to CBS News and MS Now.
The strikes and seizure of Maduro came after months of U.S. military buildup in the region, as a sizeable American flotilla amassed in the southern Caribbean Sea.
Since early September, the U.S. has conducted a series of attacks on alleged drug-trafficking boats in international waters in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing at least 115 people.
The campaign escalated in December to include the seizure of oil tankers coming and going from Venezuelan ports. And just days before the Jan. 3 attack, Trump confirmed a covert land strike against a dock facility in the country.
In the wake of the strike, Democratic lawmakers accused the Trump administration of conducting an illegal war with Venezuela and misleading Congress.
Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Iraq war veteran who represents Arizona, called the strike the “second unjustified war in my life time” in a social media post. Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said the U.S. has “no vital national interests in Venezuela to justify war” and the nation should “have learned not to stumble into another stupid adventure by now.”
Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said on X that Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told senators during a December briefing that the seizure of Venezuelan oil tankers and strikes on alleged drug boats were not about regime change.
“I didn’t trust them then and we see now that they blatantly lied to Congress. Trump rejected our Constitutionally required approval process for armed conflict because the Administration knows the American people overwhelmingly reject risks pulling our nation into another war,” Kim said.
The Trump administration has insisted it does not need congressional authorization for its military operations in and around Venezuela.
This story has been updated to add new information.
Contributing: Reuters