poured into the streets<\/a> Saturday morning, carrying the Venezuelan flag, singing together and praising the military action as an act of freedom. <\/p>\nIn Los Angeles, a different picture emerged as groups opposed to Maduro\u2019s arrest took to the streets, though none identified themselves as being of Venezuelan descent. At a rally of about 40 people south of downtown Los Angeles, John Parker, a representative of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, called the raid a \u201cbrutal assault and kidnapping\u201d that amounted to a war crime. <\/p>\n
The United States\u2019 intervention in Venezuela had nothing to do with stopping the flow of drugs, he said, and everything to do with undermining a legitimate socialist government. Parker called for Maduro to be set free as a few dozen protesters behind him chanted, \u201cHands off Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parker said when he visited Venezuela a few weeks ago as part of a U.S. peacemaking delegation, he saw \u201cthe love people had for Maduro.\u201d<\/p>\n
A later demonstration in Pershing Square drew hundreds out in the rain to protest the U.S intervention. But when a speaker led chants of \u201cNo war in Venezuela,\u201d a woman draped in a Venezuelan flag attempted to approach him and speak into the microphone. A phalanx of demonstrators circled her and shuttled her away. <\/p>\n
At Mi Venezuela, a restaurant in Vernon, 16-year-old Paola Moleiro and her family ordered empanadas Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
A portion of one of the restaurant\u2019s walls was covered in Venezuelan bank notes scrawled with messages. One read: \u201c3 de enero del 2026. Venezuela quedo libre.\u201d <\/p>\n
Venezuela is free. <\/p>\n
Around midnight the night before, Paola started getting messages on WhatsApp from her relatives in Venezuela. The power was out, they said, and they forwarded videos of what sounded like bomb blasts.<\/p>\n
Paola was terrified. She\u2019d left Venezuela at age 7 with her parents and siblings, first for Panama and later the U.S., in 2023. But the rest of her family remained in Venezuela, and she had no idea what was going on.<\/p>\n
Paola and her family stayed up scanning television channels for some idea of what was happening. Around 1:30 a.m., President Trump announced that U.S. forces had captured Maduro.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing I did, I called my aunt and said, \u2018We are going to see each other again,\u2019\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Because of the Venezuelan state\u2019s control over media, her relatives had no idea their leader had been seized by U.S. forces. \u201cAre you telling me the truth?\u201d Paola said her aunt asked.<\/p>\n
Paola hasn\u2019t been home in nine years. She misses her grandmother and her grandmother\u2019s cooking, especially her caraotas negras, or black beans. As a child, she said, certain foods were so scarce that she had an apple for the first time only after moving to Panama.<\/p>\n
Paola said she was grateful to Trump for ending decades of authoritarian rule that had reduced her home country to a shell of what it once was.<\/p>\n
\u201cVenezuela has always prayed for this,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s been 30 years. I feel it was in God\u2019s hands last night.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Torres Ramirez, it was difficult to square her appreciation for Trump\u2019s accomplishment in Venezuela with the fear she has felt as an immigrant under his presidency. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like a double-edged sword,\u201d she said. \u201cThroughout the course of this whole year, I have felt persecuted. I had to face ICE \u2014 I had to go to my appointment with the fear that I could lose it all because the immigration policies had changed and there was complete uncertainty. For a moment, I felt as if I was in Venezuela. I felt persecuted right here.\u201d<\/p>\n
During a news conference Saturday morning, Trump said Maduro was responsible for trafficking illicit drugs into the U.S. and the deaths of thousands of Americans. He repeated a baseless claim that the Maduro government had emptied Venezuela\u2019s prisons and mental institutions and \u201csent their worst and most violent monsters into the United States to steal American lives.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThey sent everybody bad into the United States, but no longer, and we have now a border where nobody gets through,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Trump also announced that the U.S. will \u201crun\u201d Venezuela and its vast oil reserves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll run it professionally,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll have the greatest oil companies in the world go in and invest billions and billions of dollars and take that money, use that money in Venezuela, and the biggest beneficiary are going to be the people of Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torres Ramirez said that while she\u2019s happy about Maduro\u2019s ouster, she\u2019s unsure how to feel about Trump\u2019s announcement saying the U.S. will take over Venezuela\u2019s oil industry. Perhaps it won\u2019t be favorable in the long term for Venezuela\u2019s economy, she said, but the U.S. intervention is a win for the country\u2019s political future if it means people can return home. <\/p>\n
Patricia Andrade, 63, who runs Ra\u00edces Venezolanas, a volunteer program in Miami that distributes donations to Venezuelan immigrants, said she believes the Trump administration is making the right move by remaining involved until there is a transition of power. <\/p>\n
Andrade, a longtime U.S. citizen, said she hasn\u2019t been to Venezuela in 25 years \u2014 even missing the deaths of both parents. She said she was accused of treason for denouncing the imprisonment of political opponents and the degradation of Venezuela\u2019s democracy under Maduro\u2019s predecessor Hugo Chavez. She said she worries that Venezuela\u2019s remaining political prisoners could be killed as payback for Maduro\u2019s arrest. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe tried everything \u2014 elections, marches, more elections … and it couldn\u2019t be done,\u201d she said. \u201cMaduro was getting worse and worse, there was more repression. If they hadn\u2019t removed him, we were never going to recover Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n
While she doesn\u2019t want the U.S. to fix the problems of other countries, she thanked Trump for U.S. involvement in Venezuela.<\/p>\n
She said she can\u2019t wait to visit her remaining family members there. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Maria Eugenia Torres Ramirez was having dinner with her family in Los Angeles on Friday night when the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[237,1431,3317,63078,48,52,51,47,50,49,62984,63077,4446,63076,592,1519,2281,9298,8074,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-119161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-arrest","9":"tag-family","10":"tag-friday-night","11":"tag-john-parker","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-la-headlines","14":"tag-la-news","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","17":"tag-los-angeles-news","18":"tag-maduro","19":"tag-maria-eugenia-torres-ramirez","20":"tag-message","21":"tag-paola","22":"tag-people","23":"tag-trump","24":"tag-u-s","25":"tag-venezuela","26":"tag-world","27":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}