By: Staff Writer
October 17, 2025
US President Donald Trump has authorized Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert activity in Venezuela in the latest attempt to have its President Nicolas Maduro captured and convicted on drug trafficking charges.
The New York Times first reported the classified directive, citing U.S. officials familiar with the decision, saying the Trump administration’s Venezuela strategy aims to remove Maduro from power. The administration has offered $50 million for information leading to Maduro’s arrest and conviction on drug trafficking charges.
The directive comes less than week after Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize for her political activity in Venezuela and subsequently praised Trump as being more deserving of the award.
The new authority would allow the CIA to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean, the Times reported.
Asked why he authorized the CIA to operate in Venezuela, Trump told reporters his reasons were migration of Venezuelans to the United States and drug trafficking.
“I authorized for two reasons really,” Trump said. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America…they came in through the border. They came in because we had an open border,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “And the other thing are drugs,” Trump said.
In a televised speech Wednesday, Maduro denounced what he described as the CIA’s record of regime change and coups d’état in countries in Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere. “How long will the CIA continue to carry on with its coups? Latin America doesn’t want them, doesn’t need them and repudiates them,” he said.
Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry reacted with “extreme alarm” to Trump’s announcement, calling it “a grave violation of international law and the United Nations Charter.” In a statement Wednesday, the ministry also denounced the U.S. operations in the Caribbean, which it said “constitute a policy of aggression, threats, and harassment against Venezuela.” It also accused Trump of trying to legitimize a “regime change” operation to seize Venezuela’s oil resources. The ministry said it would bring a complaint before the U.N. Security Council on Thursday.
Asked what’s next for his administration’s “war” on drug cartels and whether they were considering strikes on land, Trump said they were looking into it.
“Well, I don’t want to tell you exactly, but we are certainly looking at land now because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” the president said.
On Tuesday, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a video of another lethal strike on alleged drug boat from Venezuela.
Since Sept. 2, Trump has ordered military strikes on at least five boats in the Caribbean Sea that the administration insists, without providing evidence, were carrying drugs to the U.S. The use of lethal of military force against drug boats is unprecedented and raises legal questions. Past administrations have relied on law enforcement to interdict drug shipments.
The latest strike happened on Tuesday and killed another six individuals reports said.