On January 3, 2026, the Trump administration illegally abducted President Nicolas Maduro Moros, a sitting head of state and his wife Cilia Flores, in an act of war. Deploying 150 U.S. aircraft and dozens of special forces, they killed over a hundred Venezuelans, mostly civilians, and thirty-two Cubans who died defending the President from a military operation that flagrantly violated U.S. and international law.
Maduro and Flores are now held in Brooklyn, awaiting trial on charges that shift with political convenience, first the “Cartel of the Suns,” now a drug conspiracy narrative that has disappeared into thin air. If the absurdities in the charges and the indictment weren’t enough, due process has been further violated with the refusal of the U.S. government to even allow Venezuela to pay for President Maduro’s legal defense, weaponizing sanctions to deny him counsel just as those same sanctions have strangled an entire nation.
This U.S. intervention in Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Maduro was no isolated event. It followed the deployment of U.S. warships and 15,000 troops to the Caribbean under Operation Southern Sphere, a campaign that has already claimed over 150 lives in extrajudicial killings and is set to continue. The Trump administration’s message to Latin America and the Caribbean under a reinvigorated Monroe Doctrine is clear: brute force and gunboat diplomacy are back to force the peoples of the region to submit to its will.
We reject this and all attempts to undermine the sovereignty of the region. We join the millions worldwide demanding the immediate, unconditional release of Nicolás Maduro Moros and Cilia Flores and an end to this sham prosecution.
