Nearly an hour passed before Nixon Leal joined our scheduled Zoom interview.
“Ya casi,” he texted via WhatsApp. A Spanish phrase for “almost ready,” I learned. I relayed the message to my editor, Erika Chavez, who would translate the conversation, and she told me the longstanding joke that “ya casi” really means you’re not even close to being ready. A relatable sentiment across languages.
When Leal’s camera flickered on, a growing smile squeezed between his motorbike helmet. The 36-year-old Venezuelan man had spent his day doing mobile deliveries, but he told us there was no time limit for our talk. He had all the time in the world for this conversation.
On Jan. 3, 2026, the Trump administration captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and took them to New York City, where they will stand trial on federal drug and weapons charges. They have both pleaded not guilty.
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“Things were so bad that even a foreign action in our territory seemed like the only path left to achieve freedom, because we tried everything ourselves and failed,” Leal told us.
Like millions of other Venezuelans who have fled the country, Leal had reason to celebrate Maduro’s fall. Back in Venezuela, he had worked with the opposition party, organizing and participating in protests across cities, he told us. But those protests, he said, led to two years, seven months, and 22 days as a political prisoner. (Given the difficulty of obtaining records from Venezuela, Daily Kos could not verify the details of Leal’s sentence.)
“There, I was tortured for the first time, like in books or movies,” he recalled. “They stripped me, threatened me with a stick, saying they would rape me, hung me naked from the ceiling, bent my body backward, put boots on my neck, beat me until I lost vision.”
But the torture didn’t end after his release, he said. Leal told us he was forced to go underground, into hiding to avoid ongoing threats. However, when the Chavistas—or supporters of Maduro—came for his mother and friends, he fled.
“I decided to go to the United States through the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama,” he told Daily Kos, which traverses about 100 kilometers of jungle. During the four days and four nights hiking through Panama’s jungle, Leal brought only the bare essentials and had to use the environment around him to survive, he said.
Nixon Leal crossed the treacherous Darien Gap on foot while fleeing to safety in the U.S.
The Darién Gap claims hundreds of lives per year as desperate South Americans make the journey northward. Between 2018 and 2023, over 250 deaths were reported. In 2024, at least 55 lives were reportedly given to the jungle.
“I drank from rivers until I saw corpses in the water and couldn’t anymore,” Leal told us.
In August 2021, after drifting in canoes, dealing with dodgy coyotes, and evading police, he said he arrived at the Mexico-U.S. border. Today, Leal says he obtained permanent U.S. residency.
Leal’s story is unique to him but not uncommon. As of last June, roughly 1.1 million Venezuelans had arrived in the U.S., and approximately 600,000 used the Temporary Protected Status program, which the Trump administration has since terminated for the nation.
Daily Kos spoke with six men and women who left their lives in Venezuela before the Chavista government—and the deadly environment it fostered—took all that was left. For clarity and length, we’ve included pieces of their stories to contextualize the sentiment across Venezuelans who fled. Due to the nation’s fraught political situation, Daily Kos cannot confirm the accuracy of every detail in the men and women’s stories. Still, we think it is important to share their thoughts and experiences with our audience.
After news of Maduro’s capture broke early that Saturday morning, the response was mixed. There were block parties painting the day and night with yellow, blue, and red—the colors of the Venezuela flag. But angry protesters also hit the streets in both the U.S. and Venezuela, with some demanding the return of Maduro and others opposed to the Trump administration’s incursion into a sovereign nation.
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Many on the left, in Venezuela and abroad, called this a gross, illegal misuse of power—outright imperialist. Unlike Venezuelans such as Leal, who were focused on Maduro’s human rights abuses, U.S. President Donald Trump was fixated on the country’s vast oil reserves. And despite Trump meeting with opposition leader María Corina Machado on Jan. 15, it is unclear if the president will use U.S. resources to push for a broader change of power. As it stands, Trump has said he would not stand behind Machado, regardless of his newfound participation-trophy-coded Nobel Peace Prize.
“Venezuelans who were hoping for the end of the regime can applaud Maduro's demise, but they have to get up the next morning and realize that the same bastards are in power,” Steve Levitsky, a professor of Latin American studies at Harvard University, told Daily Kos.
“Right now, the Trump administration seems perfectly content with leaving the old regime intact. So Venezuela hasn't democratized. It hasn't gotten rid of the corrupt thugs,” he added. “They're all there, except for Maduro and his wife.”
Jofre Rodriguez was shot during a protest against Venezuela’s Chavista regime.
Many Venezuelans, including Jofre Rodriguez, understand this reality.
“While Chavismo remains in power—as a criminal structure that has kidnapped all state institutions and made its power public—a free election cannot be guaranteed,” he told Daily Kos in a video response to a list of written questions. “We would simply be talking about the same hell with different devils.”
In 2017, at 18 years old, Rodriguez suffered his first assassination attempt by the government-backed colectivos, groups of armed men who patrol the city streets often on motorbikes. Colectivos, once steadily funded by former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, now use drug dealing, extortion, and intimidation tactics to obtain funding and control the opposition.
During a protest, Rodriguez nearly lost his life when shot by a colectivo member, he said. The teenager suffered a fractured jaw due to a gunshot and later underwent reconstruction surgery. In photos he shared with Daily Kos, a CT scan showed metal that had been lodged into his vertebrae.
Rodriguez, now 26, is in the process of obtaining legal status in the U.S.
Despite the attempt on his life, as well as the fear of further attacks if he were to return to Venezuela, the U.S. government claims that Venezuelans are now safe to go back home.
The announcement, made by the Department of Homeland Security, coincided with warnings for Americans to evacuate the country as well.
Jofre Rodriguez was shot by a colectivo while protesting, and needed reconstructive surgery for injuries to his jaw and vertebrae.
“There are reports of groups of armed militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence of U.S. citizenship or support for the United States,” read a Jan. 10 press release from DHS. “U.S. citizens in Venezuela should remain vigilant and exercise caution when traveling by road.”
Many Venezuelans in the U.S. are afraid of what would happen if they were shipped back.
J., a former government employee under both Chávez and Maduro, believes that only God could protect him if he were deported. We granted J. anonymity so that sharing his perspective would neither harm his ongoing asylum case in the U.S. nor impact his family still living in South America.
During the years he said he spent working for the Venezuelan government, J. believed in the socialist causes preached by the administration. However, the deeper he got, the more his hopeful belief fell apart.
“I saw how they mistreated the people, how they lied to the people,” J. told us. “Everything was given to our bosses. It never reached [the people].”
Soon, he realized that guerrillas were using the government to embezzle money as well. Later, J. resigned from his position, he said.
J.’s son was one of the more than 250 Venezuelan men whom Trump illegally sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison—a move that seemed to foreshadow the intervention to come. When J.’s son returned home alongside the other prisoners, the Chavista government offered him a job, J. said.
“They wanted to use him like a mascot, like a political trophy,” J. told us.
He said his son knew what kind of future that would entail, so he fled the country as well. After all, he knew his father’s story.
J. told us his government position had soured when armed guerillas pushed him to accept their partnership and he refused. They offered his municipality an ambulance and other aid, he said, in exchange for vague favors. The neighborhood desperately needed the help, but he knew what might come if he accepted: being forced to participate in illegal activities (like transporting drugs). After J. turned down the offer, threats on his and his family’s lives followed him across South American borders, he said. So he fled to the U.S.
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Now, he’s worried about what would happen if Trump starts sending Venezuelans, even those previously granted Temporary Protected Status, back to their home country.
“If they deport me to Venezuela, then yes, I am afraid that they might kill me, go after my family to persecute me,” J. told us. “There, I fear both the guerrillas and the government.”
As it stands, the country’s future is uncertain. In Trump’s words, the U.S. will “run” Venezuela. And after meeting with Trump, opposition leader Machado claimed she was “profoundly confident” in Trump ensuring free elections in the future.
Past elections in Venezuela, including the highly contested 2024 presidential election, were laden with accusations of fraud.
J. participated in it, he told us.
During his time as a poll worker, he and his wife cast votes under other citizens’ names, he said, adding, “We committed fraud when we were still blind and didn’t understand what we were doing.”
Now, the hope of fairness and freedom is all that Venezuelans have.
In the end, many of the Venezuelans persecuted under the Chavista administration could care less about Trump and his desire for their country’s oil.
“Some [opposing Venezuelans] say, ‘The Americans just want our oil.’ But before that, our oil and wealth were already being stolen by Russia, China, Iran, Cuba—regimes hostile to freedom,” Leal said.
Carlos Cancines was once an eager military cadet and soldier, but grew disillusioned with Venezuela’s government under President Nicolas Maduro. His outspoken opposition made him a target for death threats and he is currently seeking asylum in the U.S.
Carlos Cancines feels similarly to Leal. Cancines, a 31-year-old Venezuelan seeking asylum in the U.S., doesn’t care about the who or how—he just wants freedom for his home country. As a matter of fact, he cheers for Trump, showing his support in the form of many AI-generated Instagram posts.
“I simply fight for the freedom of my country. And if President Trump is someone who helps our country emerge from this tragedy that has lasted more than 26 years, then he has all my recognition and gratitude,” he told Daily Kos. “I am sure that on my part and on behalf of the Venezuelan people, we will always be grateful.”
Cancines was in the Venezuelan military under Maduro before seeing the pain on the streets and choosing to leave his position, he said.
“They were sending forces to repress the people, which we did not agree with,” he said. “In the academy, they had painted one picture, but when I went out to work, it was something else.”
Cancines began denouncing the government via social media in 2018, after Maduro was elected for a second term. When the Chavista regime learned of Cancines’ views, he was added to a military most-wanted list, he said. Despite relocating to Colombia, government-affiliated gangs located him and made attempts to silence the opposing voice, he told Daily Kos.
But today, as his asylum case is still pending in the U.S., he holds out hope.
While opposing voices condemn the illegal actions of Trump’s oil-hungry power grab, many displaced Venezuelans just want one thing—for the U.S. president to hold up his end of the bargain so they can return home.
“Until the transition is secure, until the country is somewhat disarmed and safer, Venezuela could face violence, coups, or political assassinations,” Leal said. “Once real electoral conditions are created, then the opposition can return and change can finally happen. I don’t see another viable path.”
Until then, Leal said, he would be returning to nothing.
“The memories I have of my country exist only in my mind,” he lamented. “The home I left behind no longer exists.”
