Venezuelans on Long Island look to their home country's future with hope, anxiety after Maduro's arrest

Luis Solorzano, who owns a Venezuelan restaurant in East Meadow, thought a new chapter had dawned in his homeland when U.S. Special Operations forces swooped in on Jan. 3 and arrested President Nicolás Maduro in a daring nighttime raid.

But a week later, he is worried that, although Maduro was removed, his authoritarian government remains in place, he said. He is fretting about friends and relatives back home over what he and human rights groups say is ongoing government repression, with agents reviewing people’s cellphones at roadside checkpoints and on public buses for signs of celebration following Maduro’s arrest.

And like other of his countrymen, he is puzzled why President Donald Trump did not install Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who received the Nobel Peace Prize last year, as the new president. Instead, Trump appeared to bless Maduro’s vice president as the new interim leader, although he has agreed to meet with Machado next week.

"It’s like having a corporation of 100,000 employees and they just took the chief executive," Solorzano said in Spanish. "The corporation continues functioning."

Some Venezuelans on Long Island have greeted Maduro’s capture by the United States — ostensibly on weapons and "narco-terrorism" charges — with relief and hope. But there is also anxiety over what comes next and who will be running the country. They are phoning and texting relatives back home, though they say many there are too afraid to say much about the upheaval.

Many are also concerned about what the U.S. actions mean for Venezuelans already in the United States, particularly for those seeking legal status through asylum, temporary protected status or other pathways. New York City saw an influx of tens of thousands of Venezuelans during an immigration crisis under President Joe Biden between 2022 and 2024. Some also arrived on Long Island.

"This is the question that a lot of us are asking," Solorzano said. "They should open a window of hope for the Venezuelans who want to stay here, that have more than 10 years here and are contributing to the society economically. I would be afraid if they force us to return."

The arrest has also stoked anger among some Venezuelans. While many cheered Maduro's capture, his supporters decry what they call a return to U.S. imperialism and illegal interference in a sovereign nation, and a power grab for the country's oil wealth. Many countries, including Russia, China and Brazil, have denounced the raid and Maduro's arrest.

During 13 years in power, Maduro's government crushed free speech, jailed and killed political opponents, oversaw fraudulent elections and destroyed the economy of a nation with the largest oil reserves in the world, according to his critics. It led to the largest mass migration in modern Latin American history, with 8 million Venezuelans fleeing a country currently home to 28.5 million people, according to U.N. figures.

Trump ordered the arrest of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, claiming Maduro was heavily involved in international drug trafficking. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Trump "is bringing stability to Venezuela and bringing to justice an illegitimate Narco Terrorist dictator who stole from his own people." 

But critics said the charges were an excuse to intervene in Venezuela and lay claim to its oil reserves. Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court last week.

A tense, chaotic aftermath 

In the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, a cousin of Solorzano’s wife, reached by telephone, told Newsday the situation is tense, with people waiting up to three hours on lines to enter supermarkets as they panic over what the immediate future holds.

The streets are largely empty, with little traffic, as most people stay home out of fear, said the cousin, who did not want her name used for fear of retribution by the government. Many businesses and schools are shuttered. Though Maduro was unpopular, there have been almost no public celebrations of his arrest, she said. There have been street rallies, some of them numbering several thousand people, protesting Maduro's arrest.

"The situation in our country is very tense," she said in Spanish. "There is a lot of silence. The repression doesn’t stop. We are afraid to say anything, to go out on the streets. [People] feel a lot of fear that something is going to happen."

"We don’t have any hope," she added. "Here we don’t have work, we don’t have health care, we don’t have food. We don’t have anything .... But we have confidence in the government of the United States. We feel their support."

Maxima Marcano, 64, a Plainview resident, said she had spoken with and texted friends and relatives in Venezuela, but all of them were afraid to say anything about what was happening.

"People don’t want to talk much about it," she said in Spanish.

Since the media in Venezuela is controlled by the government, Marcano's friends and relatives there ask her for information about what is actually happening, she said. They are afraid to scroll through social media or the internet, or don't have online access or to international television stations like CNN.

So Marcano texts tidbits of information, which her friends and relatives read quickly and then erase to avoid retaliation from the government, she said. When they speak, they talk in code in case government agents are listening.

Marcano and others fear part of the Trump administration’s plan may be to send people back to Venezuela now that Maduro is gone even though they have spent years here building lives.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has "ended Temporary Protected Status for more than 500,000 Venezuelans and now they can go home to a country that they love," her department told Newsday in a statement on Friday.

New York City protests

While on Long Island there have been few if any public displays of support for or opposition to the U.S. action in Venezuela, New York City and elswhere have seen some demonstrations. 

One activist, Manhattan resident William Camacaro, 55, a longtime supporter of the left-wing "Bolivarian Revolution" started by Hugo Chávez and continued by Maduro after Chavez died in 2013, has been mobilizing since the raid.

He says he was inspired by the revolution led by Chavez and his followers — known as "Chavistas" — which sought to redirect the country's oil wealth to the poor majority through investments in education, health care and housing. Poverty under Chavez dropped from 50% in 1998 to 31.9% in 2012, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

But it rose again under Maduro to as high as 90% after oil prices fell, the United States imposed financial sanctions against Venezuela and, according to critics, Maduro mismanaged the economy while corruption escalated. 

Camacaro has been denouncing Maduro’s arrest on WBAI radio, meeting with Venezuela solidarity groups and sending out internet alerts about what he calls the "kidnapping" of Maduro by U.S. forces. "We say no to Trump’s illegal war against Venezuela," one alert states. "This is a nakedly imperialist war to install a U.S. puppet government that will give Venezuela’s oil resources over to U.S. corporations." 

Camacaro has gone to three protests outside the prison where Maduro is being held in Brooklyn, and to one outside the courthouse in Manhattan where Maduro and Flores appeared on Monday.

"The attack against Venezuela is completely illegal," Camacaro said in Spanish. "It breaks all international laws."

Camacaro doesn’t believe Maduro is the brutal dictator that he has been portrayed as, he said. He noted that at least 3,000 people, including three of his cousins, were massacred by Venezuela’s government led by President Carlos Andrés Pérez during 1989 nationwide disturbances caused by unpopular economic measures and known as the "Caracazo" — mass bloodshed that hasn’t happened under Maduro, he said. Camacaro fled the country after that.

Appalled by the massacre, rampant government corruption and the fact most Venezuelans lived in abject poverty while a fabulously wealthy oligarchy monopolized the oil wealth, Chavez, then a lieutenant colonel in the army, launched a coup on Feb. 4, 1992, to overthrow Pérez. The coup failed but Chavez became a hero to millions of Venezuelans, according to Steve Ellner, a historian who taught in Venezuela for decades.

Freed from jail after two years, Chavez was democratically elected president in 1998. He was reelected three times in votes deemed free and fair by international observers.

While many Venezuelans believe Maduro has betrayed Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution, Camacaro thinks he did the best he could amid intense U.S. pressure.

Taking refuge on LI

Long Island's Venezuelan population is small. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 American Community Survey counted 2,666 Venezuelans, with 1,472 in Suffolk and 1,194 in Nassau.

Many live in heavily Latino areas such as Brentwood, Bay Shore, Hempstead and Freeport, according to Francis Tanzi, a community leader from Patchogue. A large number were professionals — teachers, doctors, technicians in the oil industry — in Venezuela who sometimes work in blue-collar jobs here, such as by driving a taxi or cleaning houses, she said. 

Most have longed for the end of the Bolivarian Revolution, Tanzi said. They thought that day had arrived when they woke up on the morning of Jan. 3 to news of the raid. But, Solorzano said, he and others were caught off guard when Trump announced the United States would "run" Venezuela, with Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, serving as interim president.

Solorzano had expected that either Machado, the Nobel Prize winner and a former national legislator, or Edmundo González, the opposition leader Machado supported, to take over. According to exit polls and international observers, González won the July 2024 presidential election in a landslide. Maduro ignored the results and declared himself the winner.

"I was surprised that Delcy was designated as president," Solorzano said. "I thought Maria Corina was the main option, and I still think so."

Solorzano now believes Trump has a master plan, he said. It was impossible to dismantle "Chavismo," or the Chavez-inspired movement, in one blow, he said, since it controls the military, the courts, the legislature, the national oil company, intelligence agencies and state governorships.

Now he expects — and hopes for — a gradual transition that will first bring in González as president, followed by open elections that Machado could win.

Keeping on the Chavistas temporarily "is a necessary evil," he said. Trump’s team is carrying out the intervention "intelligently, more strategically, and not so impulsively."

Hope for new leadership

Hugo Cardenas, 62, a Venezuelan who lives in Patchogue, also hopes for a transition.

"I think that all Venezuelans are expecting Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo to start their job over there," especially since González was legally elected, he said.

"The problem is that the transition cannot really be done just by them, because I think they need a big army to back them up," he said. "The situation is very, very dangerous."

Taking Maduro "out of the picture is just the first step for what is coming," he said. "I think that they're going to have to go back and do like a second attack."

But Trump has cast doubt on holding elections soon. Asked by NBC on Monday about that possibility in the next month, he said, "We have to fix the country first. You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote. No, it’s going to take a period of time. We have — we have to nurse the country back to health."

Analysts said bringing González or Machado back quickly could provoke a major conflict between opposition forces and the government since Chavistas still held widespread power and were unlikely to easily relinquish it.

"The risk is they could get involved in a civil war, and Trump has been reluctant to take that risk. That’s one place where he has shown caution," said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.  

But if the opposition does not eventually take power, Solorzano said, "I don’t see any advancement in Venezuela. It would continue being a country under a dictatorial regime."