{"id":107704,"date":"2026-01-06T16:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T16:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/107704\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T16:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T16:22:08","slug":"miami-didnt-want-maduros-sons-low-quality-cocaine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/107704\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami Didn\u2019t Want Maduro’s Son\u2019s ‘Low-Quality’ Cocaine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early Saturday morning, the world awoke to the news that the United States had bombed Venezuela and captured dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> and his wife, Cilia Flores, in an overnight military action. Hours later, an unsealed U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) superseding indictment<\/a> accused Maduro of running a \u201ccorrupt, illegitimate government\u201d fueled by an extensive drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S. with thousands of tons of cocaine.<\/p>\n

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed<\/a> in a social media post that Maduro would \u201csoon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.\u201d He and his wife made their first appearance at a federal arraignment in Manhattan on Monday afternoon, where they pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n

Late Monday, after Maduro and his wife appeared in court, the Justice Department quietly retreated from its dubious claim that Maduro led a drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles. The department released a revised indictment that still accuses Maduro of participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy but abandons the assertion that Cartel de los Soles was an actual organization. Instead, the rewritten indictment (which replaced the one the DOJ initially released) states that the term refers to a \u201cpatronage system\u201d and a \u201cculture of corruption\u201d fueled by drug money.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s not just Maduro and Flores who are named in the indictment.<\/p>\n

Maduro\u2019s son, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro (Jr.) Guerra <\/a>\u2014 a 35-year-old member of Venezuela\u2019s National Assembly known as \u201cNicolasito\u201d or \u201cThe Prince\u201d \u2014 is also named and accused of assisting in the drug operation starting in 2014. <\/p>\n

Notably, the indictment alleges that Maduro Guerra \u201cworked to ship hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Venezuela to Miami, Florida\u201d years later, around 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring this time, [Maduro Guerra] spoke with his drug trafficking partners about, among other things, shipping low-quality cocaine to New York because it could not be sold in Miami, arranging a 500-kilogram shipment of cocaine to be unloaded from the cargo container near Miami, and using scrap metal containers to smuggle cocaine into the ports of New York,\u201d the indictment reads. <\/p>\n

Neither a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) spokesperson nor a U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson responded to New Times\u2018 requests for comment.<\/p>\n

More than 2,000 miles away, while the couple appeared in court in Manhattan, Maduro Guerra spoke before Venezuela\u2019s parliament and demanded that the U.S. return his parents to the Latin American country. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we normalize the kidnapping of a head of state, no country is safe,\u201d Maduro Guerra said. \u201cToday it\u2019s Venezuela. Tomorrow, it could be any nation that refuses to submit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. seized Maduro and his wife in a military operation Saturday, capturing them in their home on a military base in Caracas and bringing them to New York via the USS Iwo Jima<\/a>, a large warship. While Trump said in a press conference early Saturday morning that the U.S. would \u201crun\u201d Venezuela temporarily, Secretary of State Marco Rubio clarified on Sunday that it would not govern the country\u2019s day-to-day operations aside from enforcing an existing \u201coil quarantine.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n

Late Monday afternoon, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez<\/a>, Venezuela\u2019s vice president and oil minister, was sworn in as interim president.<\/p>\n

Earlier that day, while appearing in court, Maduro declared himself the \u201cpresident of my country\u201d<\/a> and maintained his innocence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was captured,\u201d Maduro said in Spanish before being cut off by the judge. When asked for his plea to the charges, he said: \u201cI\u2019m innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the president of my country.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a breaking story and will be updated as events warrant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early Saturday morning, the world awoke to the news that the United States had bombed Venezuela and captured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-107704","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-miami","9":"tag-miami-headlines","10":"tag-miami-news","11":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}