A plane carrying captured Nicolás Maduro touched down in New York City on Saturday evening following the United States’ stunning abduction of the Venezuelan president and his wife.
The 63-year-old Venezuelan leader and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seen leaving the plane at Stewart Air National Guard Base in New York. Maduro was then taken into a helicopter, before being transported to a second in Manhattan to take him to a Brooklyn detention center.
Maduro will be detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center, which has held high-profile offenders and suspects, including Diddy and Ghislaine Maxwell, according to reports. He will reportedly be held there alongside Luigi Mangione.
A law enforcement official told CNN that Flores, 69, was undergoing a medical check in a hangar at the base around 6 p.m. Saturday, following her and her husband’s abduction from their bedroom earlier that morning by U.S. military personnel in Caracas, the nation’s capital. The couple was taken from their home by helicopter to the USS Iwo Jima to be brought to the U.S..
The South American politician will face drugs and weapons charges in Manhattan federal court next week, according to CNN. His wife has also been indicted.
President Donald Trump gloated over the United States’ abrupt takeover of Venezuela throughout much of Saturday from his private club in Mar-a-Lago, where he said he “watched it literally like I was watching a television show.”
He announced at a late morning news conference that the U.S. would run the country—home to just under 30 million people—until new leadership was installed.
Trump, 79, also revealed plans to seize the country’s oil reserves and warned, “We’re not afraid to have boots on the ground” as part of the takeover.
Maduro’s imprisonment in New York comes as protests against the surprise U.S. military action broke out in Times Square and across the city. A senior Venezuelan official told The New York Times that at least 40 people, including military personnel and civilians, were killed in the attack.
Zohran Mamdani, the newly inaugurated Democratic mayor of New York City, sharply condemned Trump’s military action in Venezuela on Saturday morning, acknowledging in an X post that Maduro and his wife were being held in federal custody in the nation’s largest city.
“I was briefed this morning on the U.S. military capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, as well as their planned imprisonment in federal custody here in New York City,” Mamdani, 34, wrote on X in a post viewed 19 million times. “Unilaterally attacking a sovereign nation is an act of war and a violation of federal and international law.”
He continued: “This blatant pursuit of regime change doesn’t just affect those abroad, it directly impacts New Yorkers, including tens of thousands of Venezuelans who call this city home. My focus is their safety and the safety of every New Yorker, and my administration will continue to monitor the situation and issue relevant guidance.”
The mayor later said in an unrelated press conference that he phoned Trump to criticize the capture of Maduro, according to a video posted on X by a New York Daily News reporter.
“I called the president and spoke with him directly to register my opposition to this act,” he said. He declined to detail the president’s response. Mamdani’s aides told The New York Times that the Saturday afternoon call was “brief.”
“I registered my opposition, I made it clear and we left it at that,” Mamdani said.
