What began as a quiet night inside one of Caracas’ most heavily guarded military zones ended with Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in handcuffs thousands of miles away in New York.

A dramatic video released by the White House’s Rapid Response 47 account shows Maduro being walked through the New York office of the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt and restrained, the 63-year-old leader is seen moving down a blue-carpeted corridor marked “DEA NYD.” As officials watch, he calmly says, “Good night” and “Happy New Year.”

The footage surfaced hours after US forces carried out a surprise pre-dawn operation in the Venezuelan capital. According to reports, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were asleep inside their residence at the high-security Ft Tiuna military compound when elite American troops stormed the premises. The operation — named “Operation Absolute Resolve” — lasted roughly 30 minutes and involved special units, including the US Army’s Delta Force. Washington said no American soldiers were killed.

After his capture, Maduro was flown out of Venezuela and briefly taken to a US military base before being transferred to New York on Saturday evening. From the DEA headquarters in lower Manhattan, he was moved to the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn — the same federal jail where rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs was held during his trial last year.

US Tracked Maduro’s Every Move

US officials revealed that the arrest followed months of intense surveillance. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine said intelligence agencies tracked nearly every aspect of Maduro’s daily life. “How he moved, where he lived, where he traveled, what he ate, what he wore — what were his pets,” he said, highlighting the scale of monitoring. He added that the mission involved months of “pinpoint” planning and rehearsals.

US President Donald Trump later claimed he personally watched the operation unfold. He said American forces had even built a replica of Maduro’s residence to practise the raid. “I watched it, literally, like I was watching a television show,” Trump told Fox and Friends, describing the compound as “a fortress.”

Maduro and Flores now face a sweeping set of criminal charges in the United States. Attorney General Pam Bondi said they have been indicted for “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States”.

A 25-page indictment alleges that since at least 1999, Maduro and senior figures in his administration worked with international drug cartels — including Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, the Zetas, Colombian narco-terrorist groups, and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang — to move cocaine into the US. Prosecutors claim diplomatic passports were sold and private aircraft arranged to move drug money “under diplomatic cover.”

The charges further accuse the couple of diverting seized cocaine for personal gain and using state-backed gangs to protect their network. They are also alleged to have ordered “kidnappings, beating and murders against those who owed them drug money or otherwise undermined their drug trafficking operation.”

Trump has defended the aggressive action by pointing to drug trafficking, illegal migration and Venezuela’s oil wealth. He has previously said the US would “run” Venezuela and tap its vast oil reserves, while maintaining that Maduro’s rule lacks legitimacy following disputed elections in 2018 and 2024.

Maduro, who took power in 2013 after Hugo Chávez, has consistently denied any link to the narcotics trade. He has accused the US of attempting to remove him from power because Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves.