Former Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro will face judgment in a U.S. court. U.S. forces arrested Maduro at his home in Caracas, Venezuela, and extradited him to New York. Maduro faces charges of narcoterrorism and smuggling cocaine.
According to ABC, CBS and others, the U.S. government plane carrying Maduro landed at Stewart International Airport in Orange County, New York, at about 5 p.m. on the 3rd (local time). After being arrested in Caracas, Maduro set foot on U.S. soil via the U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima. He took a helicopter to New York City with agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). After completing booking procedures at a specific location in New York City, he is expected to be placed in a detention center.
In 2020, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York indicted Maduro on charges including conspiring to commit narcoterrorism and conspiring to import cocaine. At the time, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said, "Maduro and his cronies distributed large quantities of cocaine to harm the health and welfare of Americans," and "weaponized cocaine intentionally." According to the indictment, Maduro conspired with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an armed rebel group in Colombia, to distribute thousands of tons of cocaine in the United States.
Maduro's wife, Cilia Flores, was also arrested. Flores is accused of mediating between a major drug trafficker and the head of Venezuela's anti-narcotics agency and taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. Attorney General Pam Bondi stressed via social media that "Maduro and Flores will face the judgment of justice in a U.S. mainland court."
According to U.S. media, the Maduro couple is likely to be held at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, which has high-intensity security facilities. This is where drug kingpin El Chapo and music mogul Sean Diddy Combs, among others, are held. Richard Frankel, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent, analyzed that "very strict security measures will be implemented during Maduro's transfer and detention."
This arrest is the result of the collapse of the Maduro regime coinciding with U.S. military intervention. President Donald Trump declared, "The United States will run Venezuela for the time being." The legal community believes Maduro will find it difficult to avoid a heavy sentence. In addition to drug-related charges, he also faces charges of possessing a machine gun and explosive devices. The Maduro couple's court hearing could be held as early as Monday.
Experts are watching the possibility that Maduro will expose crimes by other senior officials during the U.S. trial. Key figures in the military and political circles who benefited under the Maduro regime could one after another come under investigation. This could serve as a catalyst accelerating the collapse of internal power in Venezuela.
The level of legal punishment is also of interest. Under U.S. law, the narcoterrorism conspiracy charge applied to Maduro carries a minimum of 20 years in prison and up to life imprisonment. There is precedent in which former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega was extradited to the United States and sentenced to 40 years. Maduro likewise is highly likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.