Trump casts Maduro as ‘narco-terrorist.’ Experts have questions
In explaining the U.S. incursion into Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro, President Trump accused Maduro and his wife of conducting a “campaign of deadly narco-terrorism against the United States and its citizens,” and Maduro of being “the kingpin of a vast criminal network responsible for trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit drugs into the United States.”
“Hundreds of thousands — over the years — of Americans died because of him,” Trump said hours after U.S. special forces dragged Maduro from his bedroom during a raid that killed more than 50 Venezuelan and Cuban military and security forces.
Experts in regional narcotics trafficking said Trump was clearly trying to justify the U.S. deposing a sitting head of state by arguing that Maduro was not just a corrupt foreign leader harming his own country but also a major player in the sweeping epidemic of overdoses that has devastated American communities.
They also said they are highly suspicious of those claims, which were offered up with little evidence and run counter to years of independent research into regional drug trafficking patterns. Countries such as Mexico and Colombia play much larger roles, and fentanyl — not the cocaine Maduro is charged with trafficking — causes the vast majority of American deaths, the research shows.
Maduro’s indictment spells out some overt criminal acts allegedly committed by him, including selling diplomatic passwords to known drug traffickers so they could avoid military and law enforcement scrutiny in Venezuela.
(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)
It alleges other crimes in broad strokes, such as Maduro and his wife allegedly ordering “kidnappings, beatings, and murders” against people who “undermined their drug trafficking operation.”
However, Trump’s claims about the scope and impact of Maduro’s alleged actions go far beyond what the indictment details, experts said.
“It’s very hard to respond to the level of bulls— that is being promoted by this administration, because there’s no evidence given whatsoever, and it goes against what we think we know as specialists,” said Paul Gootenberg, a professor emeritus of history and sociology at Stony Brook University who has long studied the cocaine trade. “All of it goes against what we think we know.”
“President Trump’s claim that hundreds of thousands of Americans have died due to drug trafficking linked to Maduro is inaccurate,” said Philip Berry, a former United Kingdom counter-narcotics official and a visiting senior lecturer at the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College London.
“[F]entanyl, not cocaine, has been responsible for most drug-related deaths in the U.S. over the past decade,” he said.
Jorja Leap, a social welfare professor and executive director of the UCLA Social Justice Research Partnership who has spent years interviewing gang members and drug dealers in the L.A. region, said Trump’s hyper-focus on Maduro, Venezuela and the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as driving forces within the U.S. drug trade not only belies reality but also belittles the work of researchers who know better.
“Aside from making it a political issue, this is disrespecting the work of researchers, social activists, community organizers and law enforcement who have worked on this problem on the ground and understand every aspect of it,” Leap said. “This is political theater.”
Venezuela’s role
The U.S. State Department’s 2024 International Narcotics Strategy Report called Venezuela “a major transit country for cocaine shipments via aerial, terrestrial, and maritime routes,” with most of the drugs originating in Colombia and passing through other Central American countries or Caribbean islands on their way to the U.S.
Federal officers stand guard outside the Metropolitan Detention Center.
(Leonardo Munoz / AFP via Getty Images)
However, the same report said recent estimates put the volume of cocaine trafficked through Venezuela at about 200 to 250 metric tons per year, or “roughly 10 to 13 percent of estimated global production.” According to the United Nations 2025 World Drug Report, most cocaine from Colombia is instead trafficked “along the Pacific Coast northward,” including through Ecuador.
The same report and others make clear Venezuela does not play a substantial role in fentanyl production or trafficking.
The State Department’s 2024 report said Mexico was “the sole significant source of illicit fentanyl … significantly affecting” the U.S., and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment said Mexican organizations “dominate fentanyl transportation into and through the United States.”
The Trump administration suggested Venezuela has played a larger role in cocaine production and transport in recent years under Maduro, who they allege has partnered with major trafficking organizations in Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico.
Maduro pleaded not guilty at an arraignment in Manhattan federal court this week, saying he was “kidnapped” by the U.S.
While many experts and other political observers acknowledge Maduro’s corruption and believe he has profited from drug trafficking, they question the Trump administration’s characterization of his actions as a “narco-terrorist” assault on the U.S.
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the Trump ally turned foe who this week stepped down from her House seat, condemned the raid as more about controlling Venezuela’s oil than dismantling the drug trade, in part by noting that far greater volumes of much deadlier drugs arrive to the U.S. from Mexico.
“If it was about drugs killing Americans, they would be bombing Mexican cartels,” Greene posted.
The Trump administration pushed back against such arguments, even as Trump has threatened other nations in the region.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administrator Terry Cole said on Fox News that “at a low estimate,” 100 tons of cocaine have been produced and shipped to the U.S. by groups working with Maduro.
Expert input
Gootenberg said there’s no doubt that some Colombian cocaine crosses the border into Venezuela, but that much of it goes onward to Europe and growing markets in Brazil and Asia, and there’s no evidence large amounts reach the U.S.
“The whole thing is a fiction, and I do believe they know that,” he said of the Trump administration.
Berry said Venezuela is “a transit country for cocaine” but “a relatively minor player in the international drug trade” overall, with only a “small portion” of the cocaine that passes through it reaching the U.S.
Both also questioned the Trump administration labeling Maduro’s government a “narco-terrorism” regime. Gootenberg said the term arose decades ago to describe governments whose national revenues were substantially connected to drug proceeds, such as Bolivia in the 1980s, but it was always a “propagandistic idea” and had gone “defunct” as modern governments, including Venezuela’s, diversified their economies.
The Trump administration’s move to revive the term comes as no surprise given “the way they pick up atavistic labels that they think will be useful, like ‘Make America Great Again,’” Gootenberg said. But “there’s no there there.”
Berry said use of the term “narco-terrorism” has oversimplified the “diverse and context-specific connections” between the drug industry and global terrorism, and as a result “led to the conflation of counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism efforts, frequently resulting in hyper-militarised and ineffective policy responses.”
Gootenberg said Maduro was a corrupt authoritarian who stole an election and certainly had knowledge of drug trafficking through his country, but the notion he’d somehow become a “mastermind” with leverage over transnational drug organizations is far-fetched.
Several experts said they doubted his capture would have a sizable effect on the U.S. drug trade.
“Negligible. Marginal. Whatever word you want to use to indicate the most minor of impacts,” said Leap, of UCLA.
The Sinaloa Cartel — one of Maduro’s alleged partners, according to his indictment — is a major player in Southern California’s drug trade, with the Mexican Mafia serving as middleman between the cartel and local drug gangs, Leap said. But “if anyone tries to connect this to what is happening now in Venezuela, they do not understand the nature of drug distribution, street gangs, the Mexican Mafia, everything that goes on in Southern California. There is no connection.”
Berry said in the wake of Maduro’s capture, “numerous state and nonstate actors involved in the illegal narcotics trade remain unaffected.”
