Latest update January 6th, 2026 12:28 AM
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- Countries unite against U.S. kidnapping of Maduro at UN Security Council meeting
- GGMC shuts down 107 Brazilian gold operations
- Maduro pleads not guilty to U.S. narco charges
- U.S. pushes oil majors to invest big in Venezuela if they want to recover debts
- Opposition parties demand Ministers Rodrigues, Mustapha resign over corruption allegations
Trump warns Venezuela’s Rodriguez could face ‘bigger price’ than Maduro
(AL-JAZEERA) President Donald Trump says Venezuelan President Delcy may pay a bigger price than ousted leader Nicolas Maduro “if she doesn’t do what’s right,” according to an interview with The Atlantic magazine.
“If [Delcy Rodriguez] doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” said Trump.
The US leader was responding to what he described as Rodriguez’s rejection of the armed US intervention that led to the capture of Maduro.
Trump initially praised Rodriguez on Saturday after US forces seized Maduro and his wife. Rodriguez said later, however, her country would defend its natural resources.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez speaks during the presentation of the 2025 budget bill to the National Assembly in Caracas [File: AFP]
Trump also said other countries be subject to American intervention. “We do need Greenland, absolutely,” he said of the island that part of Denmark, a NATO country.
Maduro and his wife are expected to appear before a New York judge on Monday, although the court system in the US has been quiet and has not released any official statements on the timing.
On Saturday, he was flown to an airport north of the city and then helicoptered into Manhattan and escorted in an armoured vehicle to the detention facility. But why New York? This is where he was initially indicted back in 2020 on charges of narcoterrorism, cocaine trafficking and also weapons charges.
The US attorney in charge of the federal court here in New York was appointed in August 2025 under the Trump administration. He’s someone whose credentials include prosecuting gangs and drug trafficking.
So, it’s not hard to imagine the administration would want the focus to be here in New York City, where they have the expertise to handle this kind of case.
Maduro is being held at notorious Brooklyn jail
The Brooklyn jail holding Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is a facility so troubled that some judges have refused to send people there even as it has housed such famous inmates as music stars R Kelly and Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Opened in the early 1990s, the Metropolitan Detention Center, or MDC Brooklyn, currently houses about 1,300 inmates.
It’s the routine landing spot for people awaiting trial in federal courts in Manhattan and Brooklyn, holding alleged gangsters and drug traffickers alongside some people accused of white-collar crimes.
Maduro is not the first president of a country to be locked up there. Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, was imprisoned at MDC Brooklyn while on trial for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US.
Current detainees include the co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, and Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
Past inmates have included crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried and longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Detainees and their lawyers have long complained about rampant violence.
US assault on Venezuela to test Trump’s ‘America First’ mantra
US President Donald Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela will pose a test of his ability to hold together a restive Republican Party during a challenging election year.
While most Republicans lined up behind the president in the immediate aftermath, there are signs of unease. In particular, Trump’s comments about the US positioning itself to “run” Venezuela have raised concerns that he is abandoning the “America First” philosophy that has long distinguished him from more traditional Republicans and helped fuel his political rise.
“This is the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of that doesn’t serve the American people, but actually serves the big corporations, the banks and the oil executives,” outgoing US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a former Trump ally, told the NBC News programme Meet the Press.
Those concerns were shared by some who are not as closely aligned with the party’s far-right flank.
Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a moderate, said in a statement that “the only country that the United States of America should be ‘running’ is the United States of America.”
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