NEW YORK (WABC) — Nicolas Maduro was handcuffed and shackled as he touched American soil at Stewart Airport in Orange County, New York.
Maduro was flown by helicopter to the West Side of Manhattan where Venezuelan Americans watched as he and his wife were driven in a van with an armored escort to be processed by the DEA.
He is now no longer the leader of Venezuela, but a prisoner of the United States.
It was early Saturday morning at the direction of President Trump that U.S. forces raided Venezuela, carrying out an extraordinary mission dubbed ‘Operation Absolute Resolve.’
“The coordination, the stealth, the lethality, the precision – the very long arm of American justice all on full display,” said United States Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
The elite U.S. Army Delta Force captured the president of Venezuela and his wife at their compound in Caracas to bring them to justice in the United States.
“The illegitimate dictator Maduro was the kingpin of a vast criminal network responsible for trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit amounts of drugs into the United States,” said President Trump.
After being processed at DEA Headquarters in Manhattan, a motorcade took Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores by airlift to the notorious Federal detention facility known as MDC Brooklyn. Heavily armed agents waited for his arrival.
Crowds of Venezuelan Americans broke out in celebration, eager to see the deposed president of their native country put behind bars.
This caps off an escalating military campaign that started with air strikes on boats suspected of smuggling drugs into the U.S. and ended with Venezuela’s president extradited to New York, where he has faced narco-terrorism charges since 2020. As for Venezuela, President Trump says the U.S. will govern for now.
“We can’t take a chance that someone else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of Venezuelan people in mind,” Trump said.
“I am confident in the capacity for any government to be better than what we had,” said Venezuelan American, Rossanna Figuera.
ABC News contributed to this report.
