Josh Imhof | features editor

Carlos Roa, a Pittsburgh resident and Venezuelan immigrant, heard the news that the United States had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on the morning of Jan. 3.

The attack, codenamed Operation Absolute Resolve, took the lives of at least 24 Venezuelan servicemembers and 32 Cuban officers operating in Venezuela, according to the Venezuelan military and Cuban government. The U.S. suffered no deaths, but about a half-dozen servicemembers were injured, according to anonymous sources who spoke with the Washington Post.

After months of missile strikes on alleged drug boats and U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean, Roa had mixed feelings.

“As a Venezuelan, I’m happy. I’m celebrating,” Roa said.

Back in Venezuela, Roa had seen friends imprisoned and tortured under Maduro’s rule, with some committing suicide because of their treatment. However, he said questions about the true intentions of the U.S. government remain.

“I totally understand the questions that Americans are asking themselves … I hope that all the right questions the Americans have about

“We as Americans need clarifications on so many details.”

In recent months, the Trump administration had been increasing pressure on the now captured leader to step down. In addition to the strikes on boats, the U.S. military had seized a Venezuelan oil tanker and enacted a naval quarantine on sanctioned ships entering and exiting Venezuela.

“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” Trump said.

“Put in the shadows”

Maduro has been a controversial figure since he first came to power.

In 2012, then-Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was battling cancer and had to pick a successor. But because of the nature of his regime, many of the most competent officials had been stripped of governmental positions to prevent opposition, according to Luis Duno-Gottberg, a Venezuelan immigrant who is a professor of Latin American studies at Rice University.

“Sometimes you pick people because they are the most talented, sometimes you pick them because they are the most loyal. The strongest leaders had been put in the shadows or eliminated as potential competitors,” Duno-Gottberg said.

Chavez picked based on loyalty, and in 2013 Maduro was sworn in as the new president of Venezuela. However, things quickly fell apart.

Maduro lacked much of Chavez’s charisma and ability to unify, leading to dysfunction between the many factions within the Venezuelan government, Duno-Gottberg said. In the ensuing years, Maduro led a country where inflation skyrocketed, oil production decreased by 70% and over 7 million people migrated to other countries.

“The whole movement had lost its north, its purpose in a way,” he said.

Freedom of speech and the press were also heavily infringed upon.

Roa, who worked as a journalist and served as a board member for the Colegio Nacional de Periodistas, or the National Journalists Association, experienced this repression firsthand.

In April 2002, Roa anchored a news broadcast at Radio Capital, a Venezuelan radio station, and was reporting on a coup attempt against Chavez when multiple armed men entered the room and took over the broadcast.

“They said on air, ‘We’re visiting you because you’re not telling the truth. We’re going to tell the truth.’” Roa said.

After this incident, Roa began self-censoring in order to keep not only himself safe, but also his colleagues.

In addition to this, Maduro faced accusations of illegitimate elections, as well as sanctions from the United States and other world governments.

‘Shocking’

After the events of Jan. 3, the Trump administration has faced mixed reactions from both U.S. government officials and members of the general public.

Academics, like Duno-Gottberg, have also questioned the motivations of the attack.

“Those bodies were still warm when he was already talking about making a lot of money out of Venezuelan oil,” Duno-Gottberg said. “That was shocking.”

Jonathan Collins, president of the College Republicans at Duquesne University, said the U.S. military action in Venezuela would deter other countries from future military action and show adversaries that the U.S. is still a capable military power.

“I supported the action because I see it more as a wider power demonstration on the world stage,” Collins said.

He also said that this could be a “blank slate” for Venezuelan refugees living in the U.S.

“There’s a lot of Venezuelan refugees in the United States, and if we can deliver those refugees to a country that’s good to go back to, that they can take pride in rebuilding, I think that’s the goal of the U.S. accepting refugees,” Collins said.

Since the earliest weeks of Trump’s administration, he has targeted Venezuelan citizens who have come to the United States, including those that were covered by Temporary Protected Status.

In October, a Department of Homeland Security press release cited a “Major Supreme Court Legal Victory” for the Trump Administration that ended Temporary Protected Status for over 300,000 Venezuelan aliens.

Riley Hunter, the president of an unaffiliated chapter of College Democrats made up of Duquesne students, said that she did not support the attack due to its questionable legality, as well as the problems facing the U.S. at home.

“We’re in a place where we’re very ineffective in the government, and we have a lot of domestic issues here at hand,” she said. “I’m not sure getting involved in other nations at this level is a good idea right now.”

“You can do so much damage”

The attack on Venezuela has raised many questions about the legality of such operations among lawmakers and scholars.

Ryan Williams, professor of national security at the Duquesne Kline School of Law, said that one of the main points of contention is whether or not the attack falls under the War Powers Resolution, a 1973 federal law passed in order to limit the U.S. president’s ability to deploy troops without congressional approval.

The law requires the president to notify Congress of military action within 48 hours and prohibits armed forces from staying for over 60 days without congressional approval.

Williams said that even if the attack does fall under the War Powers Resolution, military technology has advanced since the 1970s.

“You can do so much damage in a state in 60 days now,” he said.

Questions also remain about maintaining law and order in Venezuela. Duno-Gottberg said governance should lie in the hands of Venezuelans.

“They need to follow the constitution, the U.S. cannot be running the country from afar, this is not a colony,” he said. “This incident goes beyond Venezuelan politics.”

Roa agreed.

“At some point the American government needs to know when to step out. We are an independent country, and we ran our country in a very efficient way before Chavez,” he said. “We can do this again.”

Josh Imhof can be reached at imhofj@duq.edu