When Ana Gil García heard about the United States’ capture of Venezuela’s president, she felt a sense of cautious optimism.
But the cofounder of the Illinois Venezuelan Alliance said she knows the future of the country and her son who lives in Caracas hang in the balance. She’s also wary of a foreign government intervening in the South American country. Venezuelans should decide their own destiny, she said.
“We don’t know what could be the immediate consequences to the country,” Gil said. “What we know is that we cannot accept civilians being killed … we are against any intervention in which civilians will suffer more than what they have already suffered.”
The Trump administration’s capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife early Saturday morning brought up complicated emotions for some Venezuelan community leaders. Some groups and elected officials categorically opposed the stunning operation, calling it government overreach. Others, like Gil, said there’s some hope in being rid of a leader most human rights organizations describe as a dictator.
The U.S. flew Maduro out of Venezuela in an extraordinary military operation that plucked a sitting leader from office. Maduro and his wife arrived in New York to face prosecution by the Justice Department after a grand jury indicted them on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges.
President Donald Trump insisted the U.S. government would run the country at least temporarily and would tap Venezuela’s vast oil reserves to sell “large amounts” to other countries. The legal authority for the operation was not immediately clear, though the Trump administration described it — and earlier deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea — as necessary to stem the flow of dangerous drugs.
Gov. JB Pritzker, however, called it an “unconstitutional military action” in a statement, and said Trump is putting troops in danger with “no long-term strategy.”
“The American people deserve a President focused on making their lives more affordable,” he said.
Meanwhile, hundreds gathered downtown Saturday evening to protest the operation. Carrying signs that said, “No War on Venezuela,” and chanting, “No war, no coup, Donald Trump shame on you,” protesters criticized American “forever wars.” They also said it’s immoral for the government to profit from Venezuelan oil.
“Every single time the United States attacks another country, regardless of what the political color of that regime in power, the people of those countries suffer immeasurably,” activist Andy Thayer said.
“However impoverished they were before, they were greatly more impoverished afterwards,” he added.
In addition to Pritzker, several local elected officials condemned the action. U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth called it “reckless and unconstitutional,” while Mayor Brandon Johnson said it “violates international law” and “dangerously escalates the possibility of full-scale war.”
“As we have said for the past two years, the dehumanization of migrants from Venezuela, and of immigrants generally, by the Far Right has laid the groundwork for military action in Central and South America,” Johnson said in a statement.
About 50,000 Venezuelan migrants have arrived in Chicago over the last several years as they fled political turmoil and extreme poverty in their home country. The Supreme Court last year allowed the Trump administration to strip legal protections for thousands of these migrants, some of whom were arrested in recent immigration enforcement operations.
Gil said, if anything, she hopes the military action helps people understand why swaths of immigrants fled Venezuela for better opportunities in the United States.
“When we left the country, we didn’t leave because we wanted to,” Gil said. “The people were forced to.”
Several Republicans had a more favorable reaction to the operation. Adam Kinzinger, a former congressman from Illinois, for example, said Maduro was never a “legitimate president” and that removing him without a massive military occupation is “how it should be done.”
“This was the right call,” he said on social media. “May Maduro face justice and the people of Venezuela be free.”
Luciana Díaz, the CEO of Panas en Chicago, a nonprofit that supports Venezuelan migrants, also said in a statement that they’re “deeply hopeful and encouraged for our community and for our country, after 28 years of dictatorship that forced thousands of Venezuelans many of whom are now asylum-seekers to rebuild their lives in cities like Chicago.”
“We have witnessed firsthand the human impact of this prolonged crisis. We trust that this moment will mark the beginning of a transition toward democracy, justice and the reunification of Venezuelan families,” Díaz said.
“God is with us. We continue to wait for a peaceful and genuine transition,” she added.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.