Inside Operation Absolute Resolve: How the U.S. Tracked, Cornered and Captured Venezuela’s Maduro.
The end of Nicolás Maduro’s rule did not come with a speech or a surrender ceremony. It came with a phone call, steel blowtorches, and helicopters flying 100 feet above the Caribbean.
A week before the strike, President Donald Trump made one last move. In a private call, he told Maduro plainly: step down or be removed. According to Trump, Maduro “came close” to surrendering. He chose defiance instead.
By then, the operation was already alive.
For months, a CIA unit had been operating quietly inside Venezuela, mapping Maduro’s routines with surgical precision—where he slept, how he moved, even details as small as his pets. Elite U.S. forces trained on a full-scale replica of his compound, rehearsing breaches through steel-reinforced safe rooms using industrial blowtorches. The plan had a name: Operation Absolute Resolve.
Trump approved the mission before Christmas. Final execution waited on one thing—weather.
On Friday night, the skies over Caracas cleared.
At 10:46 p.m. ET, Trump gave the order.
More than 150 aircraft lifted off from 20 land and sea bases. Bombers, fighters, surveillance planes, and electronic warfare platforms moved in coordinated silence. Power across parts of Caracas went dark. Venezuelan air defenses were neutralized within minutes.
Special operations helicopters slipped into the capital under cover of darkness.
By 1 a.m., U.S. forces breached the compound where Maduro was hiding. He attempted to flee into a steel safe room but failed to reach it in time. He and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken completely by surprise and captured alive.
A brief firefight followed. A U.S. helicopter was hit. No American service members were killed.
By 3:30 a.m., U.S. forces were gone.
Less than an hour later, Trump went public.
A photograph soon followed: Maduro blindfolded, handcuffed, aboard the USS Iwo Jima. By late afternoon, he was in New York, preparing to face U.S. courts on narco-terrorism charges.
Trump was blunt about the meaning of the operation. This was not just an arrest. It was a declaration.
“We’re going to run it essentially,” Trump said of Venezuela, “until a proper transition can take place.”
The message was unmistakable. In Trump’s Western Hemisphere, defiance has a deadline—and Maduro missed his.
