Operation Absolute Resolve
Inside the Secret Raid to Capture Nicolas Maduro
I. Introduction
In the pre-dawn hours of January 3, 2026, an elite U.S. strike force descended on Caracas under complete darkness. Their target: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a sitting head of state who was wanted in the United States on drug trafficking and narco terrorism charges. By sunrise, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were in U.S. custody—whisked out of Venezuela in a brazen military raid that unfolded like a scene from an action thriller. This unprecedented operation, code named “Operation Absolute Resolve,” was months in the making and executed with extraordinary precision and secrecy.
Below, I will break down how this daring mission was planned, rehearsed, and carried out step by step (without revealing anything compromising or classified, of course), and analyze what went right, what went wrong, and what it means for Venezuela and the world.
II. Escalation and Covert Planning
The road to the raid began months earlier, under the guise of a U.S. anti-narcotics campaign in the Caribbean. Starting in late 2025, the U.S. military visibly increased its presence off Venezuela’s coast, blowing up boats suspected of drug trafficking and striking maritime targets—a show of force that was as much a message to Caracas as it was a counternarcotics effort. Behind the scenes, however, Washington was laying the groundwork for something far more audacious.
President Donald Trump’s administration quietly launched a broader mission (dubbed Operation Southern Spear) to set the stage for regime changing action under the cover of the drug war.
Concurrently, U.S. intelligence agencies zeroed in on Maduro himself. Starting as early as August 2025, a small CIA team infiltrated Venezuela on the ground, painstakingly observing Maduro’s “pattern of life,” which includes his daily routines, habits, security arrangements, and so on, to find any opening for a snatch operation. According to some sources, the CIA even managed to recruit an inside asset close to Maduro, someone in his inner circle who could covertly monitor the president’s movements and pinpoint his exact location in real time once a raid was underway.
This human intelligence was complemented by other surveillance: U.S. spy satellites and signals intelligence kept tabs on Caracas, building a minute to minute picture of Maduro’s life. The goal was to eliminate surprises and ensure that when the moment came, U.S. forces would know exactly where Maduro would be and how to reach him.
Planning for the operation took place at the highest levels of the U.S. government in strict secrecy. A small circle of officials—reportedly including Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe—met daily for months to coordinate military options and legal justifications.
They often briefed President Trump, who personally became deeply involved in the details of the raid. By December, the Pentagon had pre-positioned substantial military assets in the region. An aircraft carrier and 11 warships patrolled the Caribbean, and over 15,000 U.S. troops were quietly deployed to forward bases under the pretense of training and drug interdiction operations. More tellingly, the U.S. also moved in specialized support aircraft—aerial refueling tankers, drones, and electronic jamming planes—to ensure that when the raid happened, U.S. forces could operate with impunity in Venezuelan airspace.
III. Training for a Palace Raid
Throughout the fall of 2025, America’s most elite commandos were rehearsing the mission over and over in remote secrecy. The U.S. Army’s Delta Force (more discretely known as the Combat Applications Group or CAG)—a highly secretive special operations unit specializing in counterterrorism and hostage rescue—took the lead in planning the direct assault on Maduro’s residence.
