In the early hours of January 3rd, 2026, Caracas and other Venezuelan cities were bombarded, and President Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife Cilia Flores, were kidnapped by US military personnel. While the initial death toll from the attack stood at 100, an additional 100 lives were lost in the previous month’s US strikes on small boats, purportedly aimed at combating drug trafficking.
Despite the Trump administration’s claims that the military deployment in the Caribbean was to combat the illegal drug trade and stop the flow of migrants allegedly caused by the Venezuelan government’s release of criminals, a closer examination reveals a different narrative. According to André Antillano, a criminology professor who has studied Venezuelan drug trafficking for 20 years, these justifications are far-fetched.
Antillano explains that Venezuela’s role in drug trafficking has actually declined significantly in recent years. According to the UN World Drug Report 2025, only 5% of Colombian cocaine now passes through Venezuela. The professor believes this decline is due to the fragmentation and competition among the various actors involved in the drug trade, as well as the prolonged crisis in Venezuela, which has exacerbated the traditional fragmentation of the state.
The notion of the “Cartel de Los Soles” (Cartel of the Suns), which the Trump administration has used to justify the invasion and the arrest of Maduro and his wife, is also scrutinized. Antillano argues that this term has been used by the Venezuelan press since the early 1990s to denounce the links between high-ranking military officers and drug trafficking, but the prosecution in the New York case against Maduro and his wife has refrained from pointing to their participation in such a structure, likely due to the difficulty of proving its existence.
Regarding Venezuelan migration, Trump has long used it as a political tool, drawing on the notoriety of the Tren de Aragua gang to promote the idea that Venezuelan migration poses a threat to the American way of life. However, Antillano points out that neither in the Latin American countries hosting most of this population nor in the US are there any signs of a disproportionate involvement of Venezuelans in crime.
In conclusion, Antillano argues that Trump’s resort to the usual suspects (drugs, organized crime, illegal migration) is merely a ploy to justify the persecution of Venezuelan migrants and the invasion of Venezuela, while the real motive is the plundering of Venezuela’s wealth and the intimidation of countries in the region to submit to Washington’s tutelage.