Nicolás Maduro, the former leader of Venezuela, and his wife have been taken into custody and delivered to a court building in New York. They are scheduled to appear in court to hear the charges against them within the next few hours.
Foreign news agencies reported that in the early hours of Monday, 5 Jan 2026 New York time, Nicolás Maduro, the ousted president of Venezuela, and his wife Cilia Flores arrived at a New York court building. Maduro is expected to appear before the court within a few hours.
Maduro and Flores were transferred from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to a court building in New York by convoy and helicopter. Both were seen wearing light brown outfits and were closely guarded by armed officers from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Since being arrested by U.S. authorities and brought to New York on Saturday, 3 Jan, Maduro and his wife have been held in a Brooklyn prison, where they are likely confined up to 23 hours a day.
Maduro is accused of controlling a cocaine trafficking network collaborating with various violent groups, including the Sinaloa and Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación gangs from Mexico, the FARC rebels from Colombia, and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang.
The 63-year-old former Venezuelan leader faces multiple U.S. charges, including conspiracy to commit terrorism through drug trafficking, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess such weapons against the United States.
The Metropolitan Detention Center has held many notorious inmates, including hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, Ghislaine Maxwell, a friend of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was held there before receiving a presidential pardon from Donald Trump in December.
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Source:cna