U.S. capture of Maduro in Venezuela criticized as violation of international, U.S. law
President Trump’s decision to send U.S. forces to Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and extradite them to the United States to face drug charges drew condemnation from legal experts and other critics who argued that the operation, carried out without congressional or United Nations approval, clearly violated U.S. and international law.
Such criticism has come from Democratic leaders, international allies and adversaries such as Mexico, France, China and Russia, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and experts on international law and wartime powers.
“Nicolás Maduro was a rogue and illegitimate leader of Venezuela who terrorized and oppressed his people for too long and forced many to flee the country. But launching a war to oust Maduro not only continues Donald Trump’s trampling of the Constitution, it further erodes America’s standing on the world stage and risks our enemies mirroring this brazen illegal escalation,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). wrote to x.
A UN spokesman said Guterres was “deeply alarmed” by the US operation and “deeply concerned about the lack of compliance with the rules of international law”.
China’s foreign ministry said “such hegemonic actions by the United States seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty”, while the French foreign minister said the US operation “contradicts the principle of non-use of force, which is the basis of international law”.
Republicans largely supported the president; Both House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R.S.D.) argued that the operation was “decisive” and legally justified. But other Republicans have questioned Trump’s authority to act unilaterally and have voiced similar concerns as Schiff about other world leaders, citing Trump’s actions as legitimizing his own aggression against neighboring countries.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) defended Trump’s actions as “great for the future of Venezuelans and the future of the region,” but said he was concerned that “Russia will use this to legitimize China’s illegal and barbaric military actions against Ukraine or the invasion of Taiwan.”
Trump defended the operation as a legitimate law enforcement action necessary to combat threats to the United States from Maduro, whom he accuses of regularly sending violent gang members and deadly drugs to the U.S. border.
“Illegitimate dictator Maduro was the ringleader of a vast criminal network responsible for smuggling massive amounts of deadly and illegal drugs into the United States,” Trump said at a press conference. “As alleged in the indictment, he personally directed the treacherous cartel known as the Cartel de los Soles, which was responsible for the deaths of countless Americans and filled our country with deadly poison.”
However, Trump did not hide his interest in Venezuelan oil. He said U.S. officials would govern Venezuela for the foreseeable future and ensure that the country’s oil infrastructure is rebuilt — to ensure that wealth returns to the Venezuelan people and also to pay off the debt of U.S. companies that lost money with Maduro’s takeover of the industry.
Lawyer. General Pam Bondi announced that Maduro, who was previously sued in the USA in 2020, is now the subject of an investigation. superseding indictment He accused himself, his wife, and several others of conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess such weapons and devices.
“They will soon face the full wrath of American justice in American courts on American soil,” Bondi wrote to X.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also described the operation as a law enforcement effort and defended the lack of advance notification to Congress.
“Essentially, this was the arrest of two suspects who were fugitives from American justice, and the War Department supported the Justice Department in this matter,” Rubio said. “This isn’t the kind of mission you can give advance notice to because it compromises the mission.”
Trump said Congress could not be notified in advance because “Congress is going to be leaked and we don’t want leakers.”
Michael Schmitt, a professor of international law at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom and professor emeritus of international law at the U.S. Naval Academy, said Trump’s actions were a “clear violation” of international law.
He said the United States did not have UN Security Council authorization to conduct military operations in Venezuela or any legitimate justification for self-defense against an armed attack that did not amount to drug trafficking.
Schmitt said the operation in Venezuela went well beyond normal law enforcement action. But even if it was merely a law enforcement action, he said, the United States still did not have legal authority under international law to engage in such activity on Venezuelan soil without express permission from Venezuelan authorities, which it did not have.
“International law is clear. Without consent, you cannot conduct an investigation on the territory of another state or seize or arrest criminal property,” he said. “This is a violation of that state’s sovereignty.”
Schmitt said that because the operation was illegitimate from the beginning, the resulting invasion and intervention in Venezuela’s oil industry was also unlawful; regardless of whether Maduro’s seizure of US oil infrastructure is also unlawful, as many experts believe.
“This unlawful seizure and expropriation of US commercial interests without complying with the necessary procedures is not the basis for the use of force,” Schmitt said.
Matthew Waxman, director of Columbia Law School’s National Security Law Program, said he expects the Trump administration in the coming days to try to justify its actions not just as a law enforcement operation but “as part of a larger campaign to defend the United States against what it characterizes as an attack or invasion by Maduro-linked drug cartels.”
“All modern presidents have claimed broad constitutional authority to use military force without authorization from Congress, but that is always hotly debated. We’ll see if there’s going to be a lot of pushback from Congress in that case, which will probably depend a lot on how things play out in Venezuela right now,” Waxman said. “Look at what happened in Iran last year: The president claimed he had the authority to bomb the infrastructure of the nuclear program, and when the operation did not escalate, congressional opponents backed down.”
Already on Saturday, some members of Congress had begun to soften their initial skepticism.
You. A few hours after Mike Lee (R-Utah) shared on
Lee added that such action “most likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from actual or imminent attack.”
Others remained more skeptical.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said Trump’s remarks about taking over the country and controlling oil reserves did not appear “in the slightest consistent” with Bondi’s characterization of the operation as a law enforcement effort.
