By Bill Connor
On January 3, 2026 the US Department of Justice, supported by the US military, arrested and exfiltrated Venezuelan Dictator, Nicholas Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Florez. The arrest took place in the middle of the night at the guarded compound where Maduro and his wife were sleeping.
Based on publicly available information, the US Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D)—better known as Delta Force, or Combat Applications Group (CAG)—made the actual arrest jointly with DOJ agents. According to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan “Raizin” Caine, OPERATION ABSOLUTE RESOLVE had been months in the planning and involved all branches of the Armed Forces, as well as the Intelligence Community and Federal partners like DEA and DOJ.
The US collected detailed intelligence on Maduro’s pattern of life and whereabouts—to include his pets. The storied Nightstalkers—the160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR-A)—flew their helicopters into the heavily defended compound. No Americans or aircraft were lost, though two Operators were wounded and a helicopter was damaged.
I have several thoughts about the operation from both the perspective of an Army Infantry officer and now, a lawyer.
First, from the legal perspective, this operation was Constitutionally justified. In March 2020, Nicholas Maduro and his wife Cilia were indicted by the Southern District of New York for drug, conspiracy, and firearms smuggling crimes. Nicholas Maduro was the head of the Del Sols drug cartel and used his armed forces in the furtherance of its criminal activities. He welcomed enemies of the United States to Venezuela, including terror groups like Hezbollah, and sought to harm the US by offloading convicted criminals and gang members on our shores.
The mission to capture Maduro is similar to the mid-December 1989 OPERATION JUST CAUSE—the mission to arrest and extradite US-indicted drug criminal and Panamanian dictator, Manuel Noriega. The key difference is that the 1989 mission required a full-scale invasion of Panama and cost 23 American lives. 325 Servicemen were wounded. Military operations continued for several weeks, with Noriega evading capture even after “regime change”. Noriega finally surrendered on January 3, 1990, and was then flown to the US, where he was tried, convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
In stark contrast, in the present operation, our military was in and out of Venezuela in a few hours. The Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez, was immediately sworn in as Venezuela’s Interim President. The mission to arrest Maduro and wife comports with the President’s Constitutional powers as the chief law enforcement officer and, of course, the commander in chief.
OPERATION ABSOLUTE RESOLVE was a masterpiece of synchronized joint and interagency efforts—in a way I’ve rarely seen through my 30-year military career. The tip of the spear was the team of Tier One Special Operators, who fast-roped from helicopters onto the roof of the building where Maduro was sleeping—inside a well-defended military compound. Reportedly, the Operators detained Maduro and his wife within minutes of exiting their aircraft—as the couple was trying to flee from their bed into the safe room. They were quickly loaded onto the awaiting helicopter and delivered to the USS IWO Jima.
The “snatch” was amazingly flawless—the most spectacular, though arguably not the most challenging part of the operation. Special operators train their entire careers for this type of mission. Reportedly, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) trained on a mock-up of the exact building and quarters they would hit. They prepared for every contingency, including carrying blow torches in case Maduro made it inside his safe room. Those reports are in line with what has been disclosed about the May 2022 OPERATION NEPTUNE SPEAR—the daring raid to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan—where the 9/11 mastermind has been hiding for years.
The toughest part of this operation—as it is for any heliborne mission—was the insertion of rotary wing assets into the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, landing and taking off inside a well-defended military compound. Helicopters are extremely vulnerable and accident-prone—yet absolutely indispensable in this kind of missions. During the Bin Laden raid, for example, one of the two specially modified Blackhawk helicopters suffered fatal damage on ingress by merely scraping the side of a building and had to be scuttled (blown up) before the mission even begun.
For weeks, the Venezuelan military had watched the massive military buildup in the waters off Venezuela. They had watched the USS Gerald Ford carrier battle group enter the Caribbean—for the first time since the Panama invasion—and seen dozens of their drug boats destroyed. Undoubtedly, they knew we were coming. They deployed significant air defense assets along the coast, as well as around Caracas and other high value targets. Venezuelan forces were on high alert everywhere, particularly around and within the capital.
US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) turned off the power in Caracas and surrounding areas just before the Nightstalkers arrived. Fixed-wing aircraft, taking off from airbases across the US, conducted Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD)—to include destroying the Russian-supplied S-300 Surface to Air Missiles (SAM)—electronic warfare (EW), and other operations along the electromagnetic spectrum, to facilitate the JSOC ingress. Both rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft also took off Navy vessels, like the USS Gerald Ford and the USS Iwo Jima. Army forces, like the 75th Ranger Regiment, were almost certainly employed to help secure the compound from enemy reinforcements coming to Maduro’s aid. All in all, it was a phenomenal orchestration of land, air, sea, space, SOF, and cyber assets—synchronized with exquisite, real-time intelligence—resulting in swift and complete mission success.
The message to friends and foes is unmistakable—particularly coming only a few months after the equally spectacular OPERATION MIDNIGHT HAMMER, targeting Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan on the night of June 20-21. The US military is unmatched—particularly when fused with unwavering political will and resolve.
Venezuela has long been the hub of adversarial actions in our Hemisphere—the vile nexus of narco-terrorism, illicit weapons trade, and human trafficking. Today, our adversaries—China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Hezballah, etc—have lost an important base of operations in our backyard. The 1823 Monroe Doctrine—with its 2025 Trump codicil, as enshrined in the new National Security Strategy—is back.
During my last operational deployment to Afghanistan, I wore this verse from Joshua 1:9 around my neck: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Thank God for Your protection of our warriors and their spectacular mission success.
– Col. Bill Connor, U.S. Army Infantry (Ret.), served as the senior U.S. military advisor during his deployment to Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Elected by The Citadel’s alumni to the prestigious board of visitors, Col. Connor is also an attorney and a NEWSMAX defense-national security analyst.