Two days after Venezuelan’s strongman Nicolás Maduro was captured by the United States and brought to New York on drug-trafficking charges, Venezuelans in South Florida and around the U.S. are still struggling to process what the moment means.

Is Venezuela free? Will the nearly eight million Venezuelans living abroad feel safe enough to return home? For many, uncertainty has become the dominant feeling.

Venezuela has not been truly free, critics argue, since Hugo Chávez won the presidency in 1998. And despite Maduro’s capture, many Venezuelans say the power structure they fled remains intact.

Hours after Maduro was snatched by U.S. forces, President Donald Trump said that the United States would “run” the country, leaving many Venezuelans with mixed emotions and uncertainty about what comes next.

“We’re going to run it essentially until such time as a proper transition can take place,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on Saturday. He framed the U.S. presence as protection for the Venezuelan people and said the American military is prepared for a “much bigger wave” of strikes—though he added, “that we probably won’t have to do.”

“We can’t take a chance that someone else takes over Venezuela who doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind,” Trump said. “Decades of that, we’re not going to let that happen. We’re there now.”

For many Venezuelans in the U.S., the lack of clarity about a democratic transition, and the threat of further military strikes, dampens any thoughts of returning home.

Valentina Veloz, a Venezuelan living in Tampa since 2021, had been planning to return to Venezuela after her partner, Darian Maldonado, was deported in October despite having Temporary Protected Status and a pending family petition filed by his U.S. citizen mother, the first step in the green card process. Now, she said, those plans are on hold indefinitely.

More than 600,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. lost their deportation protections and work permits following the Trump administration’s crackdown, the largest mass termination of legal status in U.S. history, based on the administration’s position that conditions in Venezuela had improved.

“Once again, I have to change my life plans because of political decisions that are completely out of my control,” Veloz said.

She had planned to return to Venezuela in February with their 18-month-old son to reunite with Maldonado, and later on emigrate again — this time to Spain — hoping to give her child, Ivar, a more stable future.

Veloz, 28, a health insurance agent and tax preparer, said she fears returning after Trump warned that if interim leader Delcy Rodríguez — the vice president under Maduro — fails to comply with U.S. demands, Venezuela could face additional military strikes.

“My child is too young,” she said. “If we go back and another attack happens, what would we do with him? There is so much uncertainty. I’m happy Maduro was captured, but I’m upset that Rodríguez remains in power. Still, I hope the transition begins sooner rather than later.”

‘What exactly are we celebrating?’

Katiuska Villegas, a former Miami resident who now lives in Austin, Texas, said she sees little reason to celebrate while the same political figures remain in control.

“People are celebrating that Maduro was captured, but Rodríguez is still ruling,” Villegas said. “So what exactly are we celebrating?.”

Villegas questioned why there was little public outrage when the Trump administration revoked TPS for Venezuelans earlier this year. “When TPS was eliminated, there weren’t protests in Doral like there were last night,” she said. “Trump didn’t even acknowledge [opposition leader] María Corina Machado or her popular support. He didn’t talk about democracy. He only talked about oil.”

In his Saturday remarks, Trump did not clarify whether opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia, recognized by U.S. officials as the winner of the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, would assume power. Trump also dismissed Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, saying she lacks the “respect” to lead the country, leaving questions about a political transition unresolved.

“We are not free; we just changed the regime’s leader,” lamented Villegas, who said that when she saw Maduro get off the plane in New York City last night, a moment she had dreamed of for years, she was shocked. “I didn’t know what to feel. It was overwhelming.”

She questioned why Maduro wasn’t in shackles, facing the same treatment as immigrants like her brother, who crossed the U.S.–Mexico border fleeing political persecution and economic collapse, only to endure detention in the United States. Her brother, Freddy Villegas, has been held for six months in an immigration detention center in Texas despite having a pending asylum case.

Villegas, 38, who worked as a computer engineer in Venezuela and now works in investment trading, is among thousands of Venezuelans in the U.S. with a family member in immigration detention following the Trump administration’s revocation of TPS for Venezuela.

She, like many of her countrymen, now face the uncertainty of whether their loved ones will be deported to Venezuela or another country. Since December, when deportation flights to Caracas were halted, many have been sent to Mexico, often without identification or a clear path to safely return to Venezuela or any other country they previously lived in.

Betsy Díaz, a Venezuelan-American living in Hialeah, said she is not confident Venezuela will see real democratic change in the short term. She criticized Trump for excluding Machado from the transition process.

“It’s more of the same,” she said.

Trump’s immigration policies have deeply affected her family, she added. She brought her two daughters and five grandchildren to the U.S. under a humanitarian parole program during the Biden administration, later applying for TPS and asylum. Their adjustment of status has been pending since 2021.

She lives in constant fear that her family could be detained or deported back to the very country she helped them escape through legal channels. With the recent developments in Venezuela, she fears further actions against Venezuelans in the U.S., potentially affecting asylum cases and other pending immigration processes.

Pawns on a chessboard

Liz Alarcón, an American born to Venezuelan parents, said she was deeply disappointed by Trump’s remarks regarding opposition leader Machado.

“I understand that transitions take time, but it was unimaginable to hear President Trump dismiss Machado’s leadership just hours after the shocking news of Maduro’s capture,” Alarcón, 37, a Doral resident said. She pointed out that Venezuelans voted for their leaders in July 2024 and said she hopes Trump will soon clarify how the United States plans to facilitate a transition that allows Machado and the man voting documents show was really elected president, opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, to lead Venezuela.

Liduzka Aguilera, a Venezuelan living in Doral and a former attorney in her home country, said she has mixed feelings about the aftermath of Maduro’s forced departure from power. She feels relief that Maduro is no longer in charge, like the majority of Venezuelans, but is deeply troubled that Rodríguez remains.

“As a Venezuelan attorney, I know that the constitutional line of succession dictates that the vice president assumes power if the presidency becomes vacant,” Aguilera said. “But this case is different because the regime that has ruled the country lacks legal legitimacy. We are dealing with a de facto government. The last election that ratified Maduro was neither free nor fair. It is impossible to grant legitimacy to those complicit in a government built on illegality.”

Aguilera, 55, who is a paralegal in the U.S., added, “Delcy Rodríguez is usurping power and is simply an accomplice in the criminal network that governs Venezuela.”

Adelys Ferro, executive director of the nonprofit Venezuelan American Caucus, shares the frustration.

“We have been pawns on a chessboard, used as collateral damage,” Ferro said. “Only what benefits the Trump administration seems to matter. We are relieved Maduro is being brought to justice, but the dictatorship is like Medusa—you cut off one head and others remain. And those heads now seem protected, even as Venezuelans are deported back to the regime they fled.”

Karina Pino, a Tulsa, Oklahoma, resident since 2022, echoed that worry.

“I don’t agree with any scenario that keeps those responsible for Venezuela’s crisis in power,” Pino, 46 said. “Venezuela needs real change, free elections, no external manipulation, no fake transitions.”

She added: “If legitimacy and trust are truly the goal those who have shown a real, sustained commitment to democratic change, like Machado, must be included.”

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