WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. President Donald Trump announced Saturday morning that elite American special forces have captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, during a major military operation in Venezuela.
In a statement posted on Truth Social early Jan. 3, Trump confirmed that the couple was “captured and flown out of the Country” following what he described as a “large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader.” Senior U.S. officials told CBS News that the operation was carried out by the Army’s Delta Force, the nation’s top counter-terrorism unit.
The capture followed a series of precision air strikes that rocked the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and the states of Miranda and Aragua around 2:00 a.m. local time. The operation was reportedly conducted in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement agencies, linking the military action to a 2020 narco-terrorism indictment against Maduro.
The U.S. government had previously doubled the bounty for Maduro’s arrest to $50 million in August 2025, accusing him of orchestrating global drug trafficking operations.
While the Venezuelan government initially rejected the “military aggression” and declared a state of emergency at dawn, it has not yet issued a formal response to the news of the president’s capture.
President Trump is scheduled to hold a formal press conference at 11:00 a.m. at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida to provide further details on the mission. This marks the first time since the 1989 capture of Panama’s Manuel Noriega that a sitting head of state has been arrested on foreign soil by U.S. forces.
Be First to Comment