When deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro makes his first appearance in a New York courtroom on Monday (January 5, 206) to face U.S. drug charges, he will likely follow the path taken by another Latin American strongman toppled by U.S. forces: Panama’s Manuel Noriega.
Mr. Maduro was captured Saturday (January 3), 36 years to the day after Noriega was removed by American forces. And as was the case with the Panamanian leader, lawyers for Mr. Maduro are expected to contest the legality of his arrest, arguing that he is immune from prosecution as a sovereign head of foreign state, which is a bedrock principle of international and U.S. law.
It’s an argument that is unlikely to succeed and was largely settled as a matter of law in Noriega’s trial, legal experts said. Although Trump’s ordering of the operation in Venezuela raises constitutional concerns because it wasn’t authorized by Congress, now that Maduro is in the U.S., courts will likely bless his prosecution because, like Noriega, the U.S. doesn’t recognize him as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.
“There’s no claim to sovereign immunity if we don’t recognize him as head of state,” said Dick Gregorie, a retired federal prosecutor who indicted Noriega and later went on to investigate corruption inside Mr. Maduro’s government. “Several U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have called his election fraudulent and withheld U.S. recognition. Sadly, for Mr. Maduro, it means he’s stuck with it.”
Noriega died in 2017 after nearly three decades in prison, first in the U.S., then France and finally Panama. In his first trial, his lawyers argued that his arrest as a result of a U.S. invasion was so “shocking to the conscience” that it rendered the government’s case an illegal violation of his due process rights.
In ordering Noriega’s removal, the White House relied on a 1989 legal opinion by then-Assistant Attorney General Bill Barr, issued six months before the invasion. That opinion said the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force in international relations does not bar the U.S. from carrying out “forcible abductions” abroad to enforce domestic laws.
Supreme Court decisions dating to the 1800s also have upheld America’s jurisdiction to prosecute foreigners regardless of whether their presence in the United States was lawfully secured.
Barr’s opinion is likely to feature in Maduro’s prosecution as well, experts said.
Drawing parallels to the Noriega case, Barr on Sunday pushed aside criticisms that the U.S. was pursuing a change of government in Venezuela instead of enforcing domestic laws. As attorney general during the first Trump administration, Barr oversaw Maduro’s indictment.
“Going after them and dismantling them inherently involves regime change,” Barr said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview. “The object here is not just to get Maduro. We indicted a whole slew of his lieutenants. It’s to clean that place out of this criminal organization.”
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There are differences between the two cases.
Noriega never held the title of president during his six-year de facto rule, leaving a string of puppets to fill that role. By contrast, Maduro claims to have won a popular mandate three times. Although the results of his 2024 re-election are disputed, a number of governments — China, Russia and Egypt among them — recognised his victory.
“Before you ever get to guilt or innocence, there are serious questions about whether a U.S. court can proceed at all,” said David Oscar Markus, a defense lawyer in Miami who has handled several high-profile criminal cases, including some involving Venezuela. “Maduro has a much stronger sovereign immunity defense than did Noriega, who was not actually the sitting president of Panama at the time.”
For U.S. courts, however, the only opinion that matters is that of the State Department, which considers Mr. Maduro a fugitive and has for months been offering a $50 million reward for his arrest.
The first Trump administration closed the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, and broke diplomatic relations with Mr. Maduro’s government in 2019 after he cruised to reelection by outlawing most rival candidates. The administration then recognized the opposition head of the National Assembly as the country’s legitimate leader.
The Biden administration mostly stuck to that policy, allowing an opposition-appointed board to run Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, even as the U.S. engaged in direct talks with Maduro’s government that were aimed at paving the way for free elections.
“Courts are so deferential to the executive in matters of foreign policy that I find it difficult for the judiciary to engage in this sort of hairsplitting,” said Clark Neily, a senior vice president for criminal justice at the Cato Institute in Washington.
Another challenge that Mr. Maduro faces is hiring a lawyer. He and his wife, Cilia Flores, who also was captured, have been under U.S. sanctions for years, making it illegal for any American to take money from them without first securing a license from the Treasury Department.
The government in Caracas now led by Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, may want to foot the bill, but it is similarly restricted from doing business in the United States.
The U.S. has indicted other foreign leaders on corruption and drug trafficking charges while in office. Among the most noteworthy is Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, who was convicted in 2024 for drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Hernández in November, a move that drew criticism from even some Republicans who viewed it as undercutting the White House’s aggressive counternarcotics strategy centered against Maduro.
The U.S. had requested Hernández’s extradition from Honduras a few weeks after he left office. After the arrest of Noriega, who had been a CIA asset before becoming a drug-running dictator, the Justice Department implemented a new policy requiring the attorney general to personally sign off on charging of any sitting foreign president, due to its implications for U.S. foreign policy.
Mr. Maduro may have a slightly stronger argument that he is entitled to a more limited form of immunity for official acts he undertook as at least a de facto leader since that question would not turn on whether he is a recognised head of state by the U.S.
But even that defense faces significant challenges, said Curtis Bradley, a University of Chicago Law School professor who previously served as a counselor of international law at the State Department.
The indictment accuses Mr. Maduro and five other co-defendants, including Ms. Flores and his lawmaker son, of facilitating the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. by providing law enforcement cover, logistical support and partnering with “some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists in the world.”
“The government will argue that running a big narco-trafficking operation … should not count as an official act,” Mr. Bradley said.
