Maduro Capture Unlikely to Hinder US Prosecution, Experts Say

Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is unlikely to escape prosecution in Manhattan federal court on drug trafficking and narco-terrorism charges, even if his overnight capture by US forces breached international law principles.

The Supreme Court has held that criminal defendants generally can’t challenge federal courts’ authority to preside over their cases by arguing they were brought to the US illegally, such as without a formal extradition order.

This could make it harder for Maduro, who has led Venezuela since 2013, to contest his prosecution in the US under those grounds, international law experts said. Maduro and his wife were captured in an early morning raid Saturday to face criminal charges.

“The US authority would say: It doesn’t matter how we get him. Once we get him, we can try him,” said Marc Weller, director of the international law programme at Chatham House and a professor at the University of Cambridge.

Several international law experts said they don’t see how the administration could legally justify overthrowing the Venezuelan government under international law principles that prohibit the use of force against other nations in many cases.

But under what’s known as the Ker-Frisbie doctrine, “the way Maduro was captured could have no bearing on US courts’ jurisdiction,” Jorge Contesse, a Rutgers law professor who studies international human rights law in Latin America, said by email.

The Supreme Court upheld that doctrine in 1992 when they ruled that a Mexican citizen, who was forcibly kidnapped from his home and flown to the US via private plane, must still face trial for the murder of a federal agent.

President Donald Trump didn’t provide specifics on the US government’s legal justification for Maduro’s capture and related strikes during a press conference Saturday.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said on social media that he spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the action “likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack.”

Read also: Maduro Arrest Ups Stakes for Congress’ Abdication of Power

International law is up for interpretation by individual countries, said Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director at the Atlantic Council and a Georgetown University political science professor.

“I think the United States will find a justification to interpret this in accordance with international law as nation-states often do,” Kroenig told reporters Saturday.

‘Unprecedented’

Even so, the nature of Maduro’s planned prosecution is unprecedented, said Joseph Gerbasi, who until March 2025 served as the acting deputy chief for policy of the Justice Department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs Section.

“The analysis in the Maduro case would not rest on principles of extradition and principles of a treaty, but what appears to be an active US aggression not authorized by Congress,” Gerbasi said. “This is so unprecedented that I think there will be challenges to the arrest and facts presented in that challenge that courts haven’t addressed before.”

Prosecutors in Manhattan first charged Maduro —during Trump’s first term in 2020 — with trying to “flood” the US with cocaine to undermine the health of the US.

A superseding indictment unsealed Saturday charges him, his wife, Cilia Flores, and others with narco-terrorism and cocaine-importation conspiracy, as well as possession of machine guns and “destructive devices.”

One close comparison to the US’s overnight seizure of Maduro is the 1990 arrest of Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator who was ultimately tried and convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering in a Florida federal court.

Noriega’s lawyers tried to quash the prosecution under head-of-state immunity, but that claim was rejected because he wasn’t recognized by the US as Panama’s leader. The head-of-state immunity question could be a “key obstacle” in the government’s case against Maduro, Contesse said.

“The courts will have to overcome that rule to go after Maduro — and that will likely involve having to assess the legitimacy of his current presidency. This is a delicate terrain for US courts,” he said.

Noriega also unsuccessfully contended the US violated an extradition treaty and that his arrest represented a scenario so “unconscionable as to constitute a violation of substantive due process.”

The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held in 1997 that Noriega’s due process claims failed because they fell squarely within the Supreme Court’s Ker-Frisbie doctrine.

That precedent will work heavily in Trump’s favor in the Maduro prosecution, said Evan Barr, a former federal prosecutor.

“I think his lawyers will make all three of these arguments and I think he’ll lose on all three,” said Barr, now a Reed Smith partner.

‘Run The Country’

At his press conference Saturday, Trump said the US plans to “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”

The comments raise questions about the government’s description of the attack in Caracas as a law enforcement operation, said Gerbasi, as well as whether Noriega’s case offers definitive clues for how Maduro’s will proceed.

“We didn’t step in and seek to run the country in the takeout of Noriega,” he said. “To me that indicates a longer-term US intent here that renders the arrest even more questionable.”

Trump said Maduro was being transported by ship to the US, where he’ll face criminal charges in the Southern District of New York. It wasn’t immediately clear when Maduro would be arraigned or who his lawyers in the US will be.