US to keep Caribbean troops as leverage on Venezuela: Rubio

Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, remained in US custody on Sunday at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, ahead of an expected appearance in a Manhattan federal court on drug and weapons charges.

Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodríguez denounced the US action in a televised address, insisting Maduro remained the country’s legitimate president.

According to reports, many Venezuelans inside the country described fear and uncertainty on Sunday, with streets quieter than usual and some residents staying indoors or stocking up on essentials. At the same time, Venezuelans abroad gathered in cities including New York, Chicago, Washington, Buenos Aires, Lima, Mexico City and Brisbane, with some celebrating Maduro’s removal and others protesting the US military intervention.

The context: It comes after a pre-dawn US military raid in Caracas on Saturday ended the nearly 13-year rule of Nicolás Maduro, capping a monthslong campaign by the Trump administration to remove him from power.

US officials described the operation as support for a law enforcement action linked to federal drug trafficking indictments. In the hours that followed, US President Donald Trump said the United States would “run” Venezuela for an unspecified period.

Trump also said the US would reclaim its oil interests in Venezuela, where American companies were forced out after nationalisation and years of underinvestment sharply reduced pruduction.

Venezuela holds the world’s largest estimated oil reserves, but Chevron is the only US oil major still operating in the country, producing oil through joint ventures with the state-owned company PDVSA.

Trump said major American oil companies would invest billions of dollars to repair Venezuela’s badly degraded oil infrastructure and said the US would be reimbursed from “money coming out of the ground”.

What they said: “There's a quarantine right now in which sanctioned oil shipments, there's a boat, and that boat is under US sanctions, we go get a court order, we will seize it. That remains in place, and that's a tremendous amount of leverage that will continue to be in place until we see changes that not just further the national interest of the United States, which is number one, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela. And so that's the sort of control the President is pointing to,” Rubio said.

“The President always retains optionality on anything and on all these matters. He certainly has the ability and the right under the Constitution of the United States to act against imminent and urgent threats against the country. That said, and all of that said as right now, I think what you see as a force posture is one of the largest naval deployments in modern history, certainly in the Western Hemisphere, and it is capable of stopping not just drug boats, but stopping any of these sanctioned boats that come in and out, and really paralyzing that portion of how the regime, you know, generates revenue, so that will continue to be in place.”