Venezuela's Maduro sits in U.S. custody as loyalists vow defiance

Venezuela's toppled leader, Nicolás Maduro, was in a New York detention centre on Sunday awaiting drug charges after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an audacious raid to capture him, saying the United States would take control of the oil-producing nation.

The image of the 63-year-old Maduro blindfolded and handcuffed en route to the U.S. has stunned Venezuelans and was Washington's most controversial intervention in Latin America since the invasion of Panama 36 years ago.

Maduro, who wished his captors a "Happy New Year" on arrival on Saturday, is due to appear in a Manhattan court on Monday.

With memories of painful U.S. interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, many world leaders were staggered at Trump's move, even though Maduro's standing was low given his autocratic rule and substantial evidence of vote-rigging.

The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval. Venezuelan Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez, meanwhile, demanded that the U.S. free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president.

Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Rodríguez, who didn’t give a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured but none killed.

Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.

After arriving at a small airport in New York City’s northern suburbs, Maduro was flown by helicopter to Manhattan, where a convoy of law enforcement vehicles, including an armoured car, was waiting to whisk him to a nearby U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office.

Trump claimed the U.S. government would help lead the country and was already doing so, though there were no immediate visible signs of that.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump told a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Saturday.

He boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”

To the disappointment of Venezuela's opposition and diaspora, Trump has given short shrift to the idea of 58-year-old opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, taking over, saying she lacked support.

Machado was banned from standing in Venezuela's 2024 election and has said her ally, Edmundo González, 76 — who overwhelmingly won that vote, according to the opposition and some international observers — should now take the presidency.