The world woke up to a shock. In the dead of night, U.S. special operators stormed Caracas and vanished into the sky with Nicolás Maduro and his wife in custody.
In the darkness over Caracas, the operation unfolded with ruthless precision. Residents heard at least seven explosions and the low, unnerving roar of helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment—the “Night Stalkers”—slicing through the sky. On the ground, U.S. forces closed in on Maduro’s heavily fortified compound, a mansion built like a bunker, with steel doors and a sealed “safety space” meant to be his last refuge. He never made it.
Trump, calling reporters before dawn, sounded almost exhilarated as he praised “great, great troops” and a mission he described as “brilliant.” No Americans were killed, he said, only “a small number” of injuries. Within hours, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced sweeping narcoterrorism and weapons charges out of New York, vowing that Maduro and Cilia Flores would face “the full wrath of American justice.” Yet on Capitol Hill, key Democrats admitted they’d been kept completely in the dark—another explosive chapter in an already fractured era of American power and presidential secrecy.