U.S. President Donald Trump.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Military personnel carry the coffins of soldiers killed in the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, during a funeral in Caracas, Venezuela, on January 7, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP

A macaw stands on a decorative oil drill in Caracas, Venezuela, on January 6, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrives at the U.S. Capitol on January 5, 2026, in Washington, to brief top lawmakers after President Donald Trump directed U.S. forces to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
| Photo Credit: AP

Pipelines and an oil pump jack are seen in an oil field near Lake Maracaibo, in Cabimas, Venezuela. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez smiles after a session of the National Assembly in Caracas on January 5, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AFP

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.”

Why Trump bombed Venezuela

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.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested Sunday (January 4, 2026) that the United States would not take a day-to-day role in governing Venezuela other than enforcing an existing “oil quarantine” on the country, a turnaround after President Donald Trump announced a day earlier that the U.S. would be running Venezuela following its ouster of leader Nicolás Maduro.

Mr. Rubio’s statements on TV talk shows seemed designed to temper concerns about whether the assertive American action to achieve regime change might again produce a prolonged foreign intervention or failed attempt at nation-building.

They stood in contrast to Mr. Trump’s broad but vague claims that the U.S. would at least temporarily “run” the oil-rich nation, comments that suggested some sort of governing structure under which Caracas would be controlled by Washington.

U.S.-Venezuela tensions LIVE

But Mr. Rubio offered a more nuanced take, saying the U.S. would continue to enforce an oil quarantine that was already in place on sanctioned tankers before Mr. Maduro was removed from power early Saturday (January 4) and using that leverage as a means to press policy changes in Venezuela.

“And so that’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that,” Mr. Rubio said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes, not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking.”

The blockade on sanctioned oil tankers — some of which have been seized by the U.S. — “remains in place, and that’s a tremendous amount of leverage that will continue to be in place until we see changes that not just further the national interest of the United States, which is number one, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela,” he added.

Trump repeated vow U.S. would ‘run’ Venezuela

Mr. Trump’s vow to “run” Venezuela, repeated more than half a dozen times at a news conference in Florida on Saturday (January 3), sparked concerns among some Democrats.

It also drew unease from parts of his own Republican coalition, including an “America First” base that is opposed to foreign interventions, and also from observers who recalled past nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Rubio dismissed such criticism, saying that Mr. Trump’s intent had been misunderstood by a “foreign policy establishment” that was fixated on the Middle East.

“The whole foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan,” Mr. Rubio said. “This is not the Middle East. And our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere.”

Mr. Rubio also suggested that the U.S. would give Mr. Maduro’s subordinates who are now in charge time to govern, saying, “We’re going to judge everything by what they do, and we’re going to see what they do.” And though he did not rule out a U.S. military presence in Venezuela, Mr. Rubio said the current U.S. “force posture” was capable of stopping drug boats and sanctioned tankers.

A day earlier, Mr. Trump told reporters, “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” He later pointed to his national security team with him, including Mr. Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, and said it would be done for a period of time by “the people that are standing right behind me. We’re gonna be running it we’re gonna be bringing it back.”

The White House declined to comment beyond what Mr. Trump said Saturday (January 3).

Maduro’s arrival

Mr. Maduro landed late Saturday (January 3) afternoon at a small airport in New York City’s northern suburbs following the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home in a military base in the capital, Caracas — an act that Mr. Maduro’s government called “imperialist.”

The couple faces U.S. charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.

The dramatic seizure of the Mr. Maduros capped an intensive Mr. Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval.

Venezuela’s Vice-President, Delcy Rodriguez, meanwhile, demanded that the U.S. free Mr. Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president.

After arriving at the airport, Mr. Maduro was flown by helicopter to Manhattan, where a convoy of law enforcement vehicles, including an armoured car, was waiting to whisk him to a nearby U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office.

A video posted on social media by a White House account showed Mr. Maduro, smiling, as he was escorted through that office by two DEA agents grasping his arms.

He is due to make his first appearance Monday (January 5) in Manhattan’s federal court.

Mr. Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, and the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday (January 3) of r. Maduro and his wife that painted his administration as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fuelled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S. with cocaine. The U.S. government does not recognise Mr. Maduro as the country’s leader.

The Trump administration spent months building up American forces in the region and carrying out attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean for allegedly ferrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. campaign began in September.

Quiet falls in Venezuela after US operation

Venezuela’s capital remained unusually quiet Sunday (January 4) with few vehicles moving around and convenience stores, gas stations and other businesses closed. A road typically filled with runners, cyclists and other fitness enthusiasts on Sundays only had a handful of people working out the day after Mr. Maduro was deposed.

The presidential palace was guarded by armed civilians and members of the military. At a nearby plaza, only a street sweeper and a soldier stood, and across the street, a church remained close for a second day in a row.

Caracas resident David Leal arrived to the lot where he parks vehicles for a living only to quickly realise that he would likely not see any clients for a second day.

“People are still shaken,” said Mr. Leal, 77.

Published – January 05, 2026 12:28 am IST

American forces carried out a large military operation in Venezuela, capturing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife and taking them to the U.S. to face various charges, including narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. Representational image.
| Photo Credit: AP

File photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
| Photo Credit: KCNA/Reuters