It's hard to forget the early morning hours of Jan. 3rd, when U.S. special forces stormed Caracas, arrested Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and flew him to New York to face drug-trafficking charges.
But it's also hard to ignore that almost a month later, while President Donald Trump insists the U.S. now controls Venezuela’s oil, Maduro’s regime still controls Venezuela’s government — and Trump continues to sideline if not disparage Venezuela's democratic opposition leader, María Corina Machado.
All of which has made for sharply split emotions among Venezuelans here in South Florida, who are unequivocally glad Trump got rid of the dictator — but wonder when, or if, he’ll bring down the dictatorship.
READ MORE: The Venezuelan diaspora believes Maduro's removal means regime removal. Not quite yet
WLRN has been listening to several exile voices to gauge what sort of message the U.S.'s largest Venezuelan community is trying to send him.
'The dominant thread is oil, not democracy'
“I think the picture is very clear," says international business consultant Beatrice Rangel of Miami Beach. "There’s going to be no transition" for the foreseeable future.
"What you’re going to have is a change of leadership in the same regime.”
Rangel, who is a director at the Miami-based Inter-American Institute for Democracy and was chief of staff to the late Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez, now sees a business arrangement between Trump and Venezuela’s remaining socialist regime, headed by acting President Delcy Rodríguez.
“I don’t know whether Trump cares about democratic transition or not," Rangel says.
"But the dominant thread here is not democracy — it’s oil. So in order for American companies to come back and get oil concessions, what you need to have is a modicum of stability — which is what they’re doing.”
Still, Rangel believes Venezuela’s transition to democracy will come — not necessarily at the hands of Trump, but by the fracturing of the regime:
“The Americans are not going to let them continue drug-trafficking. So they won’t have any ways to enrich themselves anymore. That is going to create animosity between them. And they’re going to start fighting among each other — and that is what is going to eventually bring down the regime.”
'On the same ship we were on before'
Perhaps — though interdiction experts question whether deadly U.S. military strikes on suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean in recent months have put any appreciable dent in cocaine trafficking out of Venezuela.
But what matters at the present moment, says exile Francisco Poleo, is that “the people in Venezuela are feeling a little bit a la deriva, adrift, by themselves.”
Poleo is a former Venezuelan journalist — in fact, he hails from a family of journalists who were driven out of Venezuela by the regime. Today he owns a wine business in Coral Gables.
"Kudos to the Trump administration for taking Maduro out. But they have to get a regime change win in Venezuela — if not, they’re going to be ridiculed."Venezuelan exile Francisco Poleo
He applauds Trump’s arrest of Maduro. But he too fears Venezuelan regime change seems to be, unwisely, a secondary concern for Trump.
“So, this is all?" Poleo asks.
"They caught Maduro and now, now it’s basically the same regime and the same terror, and we’re basically on the same ship that we were on before?
"Kudos to Trump for taking Maduro, but it’s not only about Maduro, it’s about the whole regime, y’know? I think that the Trump administration has to get a total win in Venezuela because, if not, they’re going to be ridiculed."
Like many Venezuelan exiles, Poleo also feels Trump should be promoting Venezuela’s democratic opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado.
Trump says — erroneously — that Machado doesn’t have support or respect inside Venezuela. To curry favor with him this month, Machado, controversially, gave her Nobel medal to Trump during a visit to the White House.
Nonetheless, Trump shortly after called regime leader Delcy Rodríguez a “terrific person” and suggested Machado remains a bit player in his Venezuelan plans. This despite the fact that vote tallies show Machado's movement defeated Maduro by a landslide in the 2024 presidential election he's globally accused of stealing.
“Venezuelans need to see their leader, you know, because they connect with María Corina," Poleo insists. "That’s a reality. They need to see her strong — not as a sidekick of Trump.”
'A different chessboard'
For tech marketing executive Moraima Garcia of Palmetto Bay, Machado remains as strong a leader as ever for Venezuelans regardless of Trump's treatment of her. And she insists Venezuelans instead need to keep their eye on the larger objective of democratic transition.
“I am not a Trump supporter," says Garcia, "but I cannot deny that he took Maduro out and changed the game for us.
"So I think it is important to take a step back and look at the big picture.”
As a leading exile activist in the Venezuelan democracy movement, Garcia too opposes keeping Maduro’s regime in power — or "Maduro 2.0," as she calls it.
But she’s urging a positive patience at the moment, as the regime this month continues to release, albeit slowly, more of Venezuela’s almost 900 political prisoners.
“I don’t really care that much about what Trump says from one day to the next at this point," Garcia says, "because the chessboard looks different today. I think we’re starting to see that cracks in the regime are showing, and they’re getting bigger.
"María Corina is the leader of a movement — but the movement is made of millions of us. So, we temper our expectations — but then, as Venezuelans, we make sure that [the regime knows] we’re not afraid, and we’re going to keep pro-actively pushing for the real change.”
Aside from the release of all political prisoners, Garcia says a democratic presidential election — which polls show Machado would easily win — has to come within the year.
“A timetable for elections needs to be put in place within three months at most," she argues, "because if we go too much further than that, then this regime is going to do what they’ve always done: they gain time to regroup and entrench themselves even more.”
'Only force worked'
Independent exile journalist Maria Alesia Sosa of Miami agrees.
“This regime is experts in deception," says Sosa, formerly of Univision. "I’ve sent messages to President Trump saying, ‘Hey, don’t let them fool you, don’t let them play you.’”
Sosa says she was beaten by regime supporters while covering protests in Caracas a decade ago; and she counts several political prisoners as friends, including human rights activist Jesús Armas, who as of early this week had yet to be released.
But Sosa feels that while Trump has still not set out a clear path to democratic transition in Venezuela, he may be all Venezuelans have at the moment to achieve it.
“Sometimes you have to take the help from whoever is going to help you beat your enemy," she says.
"We’re happy with this first step, honestly, and we have hope for the first time in a long time. We’ve been yelling to the world for years now to pay attention to our situation, and nobody cared.
"Force was the only thing that worked out for us so far. So I'm cautiously optimistic the Trump administration is negotiating a democratic solution."Venezuelan exile Maria Alesia Sosa
"Force was the only thing that worked out. So we understand the transition is not going to be easy, and we might have to work with this regime. But I am cautiously optimistic because I want to believe the United States is trying to negotiate, even though it’s for oil, a solution to this horrible crisis that has taken everything from us.”
Venezuela's is in fact, she notes, the worst humanitarian crisis in modern South American history — thanks to the regime's quarter-century-long rule of brutality and incompetence. And it has driven almost 8 million people, almost a fourth of the population, out of the country in the past decade.
Sosa admits, though, that while people still living in Venezuela are hopeful, including much of her family there, they’re laying low.
“They cannot celebrate [Maduro's overthrow] because the regime [that's responsible for] all the human rights violations in Venezuela is still in power.”
'The persecution is still there'
Which is why Venezuelan-American attorneys like John De la Vega of Miami continue to protest the Trump administration's efforts to strip more than half a million Venezuelan migrants in the U.S. of their Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which shields them from deportation.
“The persecution is still there," says De la Vega, "and the danger of returning — it’s greater than ever.”
De la Vega refutes the Trump administration’s claim that Maduro’s removal means it’s safe now for the U.S. to ramp up the expulsion of Venezuelans. Since Jan. 3, in fact, Venezuela’s regime has been rounding up people suspected of supporting Maduro’s ouster.
“Political opponents [of] the regime that have been deported from the U.S., when they arrive we know they get stopped by the military police in Venezuela," De la Vega says.
"So yes, the regime needs to be out of power in order for Venezuelans to be able to return safely to their country."
READ MORE: The Delcy Deal: Will Rodríguez — or sabotage — Venezuela's return to democracy?
De la Vega concurs with other exiles who see Rodríguez and her post-Maduro cabal engineering regime survival, not facilitating regime change.
"I too think the regime is trying to play President Trump," he says. "I think their actual plan is to wait, first, for the Republicans to lose the mid-term elections if that happens, and then, second, for the Trump administration to be over in 2028.”
As for actual regime change in Venezuela, De la Vega concludes:
“Unfortunately, if we don’t have boots on the ground — if we don’t show them [more] U.S. forces — it’s ... it’s not going to happen.”
And right now in Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves, President Trump seems most focused on having U.S. drilling rigs on the ground.
