Overview
- Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife are in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, with Maduro scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court at noon Monday on narcotics-related charges.
- Large demonstrations unfolded across U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin and Houston, as protesters denounced the strikes and detention while Venezuelan expatriates held vigils celebrating Maduro’s removal.
- Outside the Brooklyn jail, activists demanded Maduro’s release and called the operation illegal, while others from the Venezuelan diaspora described the capture as a necessary first step toward a transition.
- President Trump said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela in an interim period and invoked control of oil production, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio later described a “quarantine” on oil exports and did not rule out a troop presence.
- Casualty figures from the Caracas strikes remain disputed, with a Venezuelan doctors’ group reporting around 70 deaths and 90 injuries, hospitals declining to confirm counts, and pro-Maduro rallies in Caracas urging his release.