Nicolás Maduro was captured in Venzuela by the USA on Jan. 3.

According to U.S. Department of State, “In March 2020, Maduro was charged in the Southern District of New York for narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.” After initially offering a reward offer of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Maduro in 2020 but then was increased to up to $25 million not long later. On Aug. 7, 2025, the Department announced the further increase in the reward offer to up to $50 million.

“Elite troops trained for months, going so far as to use a replica of the presidential compound based on intelligence that the U.S. had gathered,” President Trump said in an interview with Fox News — the same way the troops who killed Osama bin Laden practiced in 2011 with a model of his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. They trained with what Trump called “’massive blowtorches’ in case they had to cut through steel walls in Maduro’s safe room.”

According to NBC , “That group consisted of some of the people Trump said will now be running Venezuela, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.”

Throughout the fall, Trump steadily amped up the pressure on Maduro. In September, the Trump administration began sinking boats in the Caribbean that it alleged were sending drugs to the U.S. Experts said, however, “that the boats were shipping cocaine to Europe. All told, the administration has struck at least 35 alleged drug vessels so far, killing 114 people.”