Fear grips Caracas as a new wave of repression is unleashed in Venezuela

For a brief moment, some Venezuelans allowed themselves to celebrate.

When they learned Saturday that strongman Nicolás Maduro had been seized by U.S. Special Forces, many group chats filled with messages of joy and relief. Some people cried. One family in Caracas opened a bottle of champagne they had bought months earlier and saved for a special occasion. After more than a decade of living under Maduro, there were cautious hopes for a different future.

By Monday, however, those feelings had been replaced by more familiar ones: fear, dread and uncertainty.

Venezuela’s government has moved quickly to suppress any public expression of support for Maduro’s ouster, launching a nationwide crackdown that has included the detention of journalists, the arrest of civilians and the deployment of armed gangs across the capital.

“It feels like it did after the presidential elections in 2024,” said María, 55, who like others in this story spoke on the condition that they be identified by their first name, or on the condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisals. “We won, but we also lost,” she said, referring to the country’s last elections, in which Maduro claimed victory despite tallies showing the opposition had prevailed.

The crackdown unfolded as Delcy Rodríguez, the country’s vice president, was sworn in as interim president Monday at the National Assembly. Senior military officials publicly pledged their loyalty to her - a signal that while the country had a new leader, the old power structure remained in place.

At least 14 journalists and media workers were detained Monday - including 11 working for international outlets, according to the National Press Workers Union. Most, the union said, were held for several hours and later released, but several reported that military counterintelligence officers searched their phones. Many of the detentions took place near the National Assembly as Rodríguez took the oath of office in a ceremony overseen by her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, who heads the legislature.

Authorities also moved against ordinary citizens - empowered by a “state of external commotion” decree that ordered Venezuela’s national, state and municipal police forces to immediately search for and arrest anyone “involved in promoting or supporting the armed attack by the United States of America.” The decree, which entered into force Saturday but was published in full Monday, also suspended the right to protest and authorized broad restrictions on movement and assembly.

In the western state of Mérida, two people in their 60s were arrested for shouting anti-government slogans and “celebrating the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores,” according to state police.

Across Caracas, pro-government paramilitary groups known as “colectivos” - a hallmark of the informal security state built by former president Hugo Chávez and inherited by Maduro after his death - set up checkpoints, including along the Cota Mil highway that runs north of the city. Residents described being pulled over, questioned and forced to hand over their phones. Some said the armed men scrolled through their messages and social media, looking for anything that could be construed as support for the U.S. raid.

“We’re texting each other routes to avoid,” said a Caracas resident. “You hear ‘don’t go there - they’re stopping cars with machine guns.’”

A tense, eerie quiet has taken hold in the capital. Some businesses were open Tuesday and people stepped out to run errands, but the city felt hollowed out, residents said, “as if it were a Sunday.”

In the wake of Maduro’s capture, President Donald Trump has said repeatedly that the United States is “running” Venezuela, though it is unclear what influence Washington is exerting on authorities in Caracas.

Overseeing U.S. involvement in the country, Trump said, would fall to a small group of senior officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller - and himself. Venezuela, the president told NBC on Monday, was not in a position to hold elections.

“We have to fix the country first,” he said. “We have to nurse the country back to health.”

In a news conference Tuesday, Trump suggested that the Venezuelan government planned to shut down El Helicoide, a sprawling, spiral-shaped detention center in Caracas that has long been used to hold and torture dissidents, according to rights groups.

Foro Penal, a local human rights group, has said more than 860 political prisoners remain in state custody.

“Of course I have hope things could get better without Maduro,” a 30-year-old man in the capital told The Washington Post. “But from where I am, all I see is the same people who destroyed my country still in power. They’re still persecuting us. And we’re still afraid.”

On Tuesday, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) - who has long pushed for tougher U.S. action against the Venezuelan government - called for the release of political prisoners and issued a warning to the country’s new leader.

“Delcy Rodríguez is NOT the president of Venezuela - she is simply another corrupt leader of the Maduro regime,” Scott wrote on X. “She would do well to remember that any steps she takes outside of the United States’ wishes will result in the same fate as her former partner in crime.”

Hours later, Rodríguez, who has alternated between statements of defiance and conciliation, struck back, saying no “external agent” was governing Venezuela: “To those who threaten me, I say that my destiny is decided only by God,” she said.

In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, opposition leader María Corina Machado - who left Venezuela in December to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway - called the government crackdown “really alarming” and urged the U.S. and the international community to monitor the situation. She described Rodríguez as “one of the main architects of torture, persecution [and] corruption.”

Late Monday, as weary families bedded down, gunshots rang out near the Miraflores presidential palace. On social media, residents shared videos from their window of armed men in the streets; some speculated that a coup was underway.

The Communication and Information Ministry later put out a statement saying police had fired warning shots after “drones flew over the area without authorization.”

“The entire country is completely calm,” the statement said.