Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro has arrived in the United States to face criminal charges less than 24 hours after his dramatic middle-of-the-night capture in Caracas that President Donald Trump says sets up the US to "run" the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves.
In an extra humiliation, a White House social media account posted a video and captioned it "perp walked". It showed the once powerful and feared leader now at the mercy of his captors.
Handcuffed and shuffling in slides, American agents were either side of Maduro as he was marched won the hallway of a DEA office in New York.
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https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/2007631142200189289?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwAttempting to speak English after arriving on American soil, Maduro facetiously comments "good night".
He then questions himself in Spanish, saying, "Es buenas noches, no?" — which translates to, "That is good night, no?"
Maduro repeats "good night" to those in the room before adding, "Happy New Year," with a slightly more animated tone.
Trump had earlier posted the first photograph of Maduro in custody: blindfolded, handcuffed, wearing a grey Nike tracksuit and holding a bottle of water on board the warship USS Iwo Jima on its way to New York.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, face charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy in a US court following their dramatic capture from their home in Operation Absolute Resolve in the early hours of Saturday morning.
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Speaking from Mar-a-Lago in the hours after the US mission, Trump said "we're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition".
"We don't want to be involved with having someone else get in and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country," he said.
The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela's autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval.
Meanwhile, Venezuela's vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, demanded that the US free Maduro and called him the country's rightful leader as her nation's high court named her interim president.
Plans for oil
Trump said the US government would tap Venezuela's vast oil reserves to sell "large amounts" to other countries.
He said the US would send in troops for the purposes of securing oil, vowing the money would go towards reimbursing Venezuelans and the United States for damages caused under Maduro's leadership.
"We're going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground, and that wealth is going to the people of Venezuela and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela. And it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country," Trump said.
READ MORE: Operation Absolute Resolve: Inside the US mission to capture Maduro
US planned operation for many months
General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said US intelligence agencies had tracked Maduro for many months to "understand how he moved, where he lived, where he travelled, what he ate, what he wore".
CNN previously reported that the CIA had installed a small team inside Venezuela over the northern hemisphere summer to keep a close watch on Maduro's activities.
Caine said Operation Absolute Resolve involved more than 150 aircraft launched from 20 different bases on land and sea.
Among them were helicopters carrying an extraction force that began their flight into Venezuela at just 30 metres above the water.
Some troops suffered bullet and shrapnel wounds but their injuries were not believed to be life-threatening. Caine said one US aircraft was struck during the operation, "but remained flyable".
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Trump said Maduro could have been killed as he tried to evade capture.
"He was trying to get into a safe place. You know, the safe place's all steel, and he wasn't able to make it to the door because our guys were so fast."
The US military "went through the opposition so fast", Trump said, while also noting that "there was a lot of opposition".
"People were wondering, do we get them by surprise? Sort of surprised, but they were waiting for something. It was a lot of opposition. There was a lot of gunfire," he said.
Trump said lights in Caracas were shut off during the operation to capture Maduro, which began just before 2am on Saturday (6pm AEDT).
"No nation in the world could achieve what America achieved yesterday," Trump said this morning.
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"In just a short period of time, all Venezuelan military capacities were rendered powerless as the men and women of our military, working with us, law enforcement, successfully captured Maduro in the dead of night.
"It was dark, the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have.
"It was dark and it was deadly."
Trump claims vice president sworn in, speaking with US
There were mixed reactions from citizens: supporters of Maduro were seen embracing each other on the streets of Caracas, while elsewhere, such as in Madrid, Spain, Venezuelans celebrated the downfall of Maduro.
Maduro's government urged citizens to take to the streets.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Maraa Corina Machado, the most prominent political opposition of Maduro, posted a statement saying: "Venezuelans, the time for freedom has come."
It was not immediately clear who was running Venezuela in the hours after Maduro's capture.
Under Venezuelan law, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez would be expected to take power.
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Trump said she had been sworn in as president but was speaking with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
"She is essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again. Very simple," Trump said.
Earlier, Machado – who has been living outside of Venezuela for her own safety – said that the opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez should assume power, saying that he rightfully won the 2024 presidential election.
Rodriguez condemns 'kidnapping'
In a televised speech, Rodriguez called for calm and unity, before contradicting Trump's earlier claims that she had been sworn in as president of Venezuela.
"We demand the immediate release of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. The only president of Venezuela is President Nicolas Maduro," Rodriguez said.
The VP said Venezuela's government was prepared to defend itself, adding that the country's defence council had been activated.
She confirmed an official government response would be expected soon.
"To our Venezuela, to our people: There is a clear government here," she said.
Rodriguez emphasised that Venezuela "will never again be anyone's colony – neither of old empires, nor of new empires, nor of empires in decline".
Maduro and wife to face 'justice'
The capture of a sitting leader marked the culmination of an escalating Trump administration pressure campaign on the South American country that consisted of months of strikes on boats officials said were smuggling drugs to the US.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York, vowing that the couple would "soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts".
Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on "narco-terrorism" conspiracy charges, but it was not previously known that his wife had been.
It wasn't clear if Bondi was referring to a new indictment when she said the pair would face justice. The details of the allegations against Flores were not immediately known.
On Friday, a day before the attack, Venezuela said it was open to negotiating an agreement with the US to combat drug trafficking.
Maduro also said in a pre-taped interview that aired on Thursday that the US wanted to force a government change in Venezuela and gain access to its vast oil reserves through the monthslong pressure campaign that began with a massive military deployment to the Caribbean Sea in August.
The CIA was behind a drone strike last week at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels in what was the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the US began strikes on boats in September.
Trump for months had threatened that he could soon order strikes on targets on Venezuelan land. The US has also seized sanctioned oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela, and Trump ordered a blockade of others in a move that seemed designed to put a tighter chokehold on the South American country's economy.
The US military has been attacking boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean since early September. As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35 and the number of people killed was at least 115, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration.
They followed a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America, including the arrival in November of the nation's most advanced aircraft carrier, which added thousands more troops to what was already the largest military presence in the region in generations.
Trump has justified the boat strikes as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the US and asserted that the US is engaged in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels.
'This is horrible'
There had been at least seven explosions in the US strike, which sent people rushing into the streets.
It was not clear how many people had been injured during the operation that lasted about 30 minutes.
"One [explosion] was so strong, my window was shaking after it," CNN correspondent Osmary Hernandez said.
Smoke could be seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas. Another military installation in the capital was without power.
"The whole ground shook. This is horrible. We heard explosions and planes in the distance," said Carmen Hidalgo, a 21-year-old office worker, her voice trembling.
She was walking briskly with two relatives, returning from a birthday party.
"We felt like the air was hitting us."
Venezuela's government has called on its supporters to take to the streets.
"People to the streets!" the government said in a statement.
"The Bolivarian government calls on all social and political forces in the country to activate mobilisation plans and repudiate this imperialist attack."
The statement added that Maduro had "ordered all national defence plans to be implemented" and declared "a state of external disturbance".
- Reported with Associated Press and CNN