Nicolás Maduro was captured in a sudden overnight U.S. special-operations raid on his Caracas safe house, as part of a broader air and cyber campaign against Venezuela code‑named Operation Absolute Resolve.

Operation overview

  • The mission was planned for months, with U.S. intelligence tracking Maduro’s movements and habits and using at least one high‑level insider within his government to pinpoint his location.
  • President Donald Trump authorized a large‑scale strike that combined air attacks, special forces insertion, and cyber operations aimed at blinding and overwhelming Venezuelan defenses in a single night.

How the strike began

  • In the hours before the raid, the U.S. launched waves of aircraft from multiple bases and warships, including bombers, fighters, and drones, to hit air defenses, military sites, and key infrastructure around Caracas.
  • Parts of Caracas reportedly went dark, with U.S. officials saying power and air‑defense networks were disrupted to maximize surprise and reduce the risk to incoming helicopters.

The raid on Maduro’s compound

  • An elite U.S. special operations unit, identified by several outlets as Delta Force, flew low over the sea and into Caracas by helicopter before landing near or on Maduro’s fortified residence in the early morning hours.
  • Troops had rehearsed the assault on a full‑scale replica of the compound, enabling them to breach steel doors—reportedly even bringing a blowtorch—and fight through resistance while under small‑arms fire.

Capture and extraction

  • Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seized inside the compound, restrained, and flown out of Venezuela on U.S. military aircraft, initially to the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima.
  • From there, he was transported to the United States, arriving at Stewart Air National Guard Base in New York before being taken to a detention facility to face U.S. federal charges, including long‑standing drug‑trafficking indictments.

What remains unclear

  • Reporting differs on the exact number of casualties, the depth of prior negotiations (if any) with Venezuelan insiders, and how extensively cyber tools versus kinetic strikes were used to disable Caracas’ power and defenses.
  • There is ongoing debate about the legality and regional fallout of a unilateral U.S. operation to capture a sitting foreign president, and Latin American and global reactions are still evolving as more details emerge.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.