Drug trafficking in Venezuela centers on cocaine: between 200 and 250 metric tons move through the country each year, almost all of it produced in neighboring Colombia and routed outward by sea, air, and land toward the Caribbean, the United States, West Africa, and Europe. The U.S. government alleges the trade is protected at the highest levels of the Venezuelan state, a claim that reached its sharpest point on January 3, 2026, when U.S. forces captured President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and flew him to federal custody in Brooklyn to face narco-terrorism charges first unsealed in 2020.1United States Department of State. Nicolas Maduro Moros (Captured)
Why Venezuela Became a Trafficking Corridor
Geography does most of the work. Venezuela shares a 1,380-mile land border with Colombia, the world’s largest coca producer, and that border runs through remote jungle, river basins, and mountain terrain that is difficult to patrol. The Venezuelan states of Zulia and Táchira sit directly next to Colombia’s most productive coca zones, giving traffickers a short supply line for moving coca paste and finished cocaine across.
The coasts matter just as much. Hundreds of small harbors, fishing villages, and unmonitored beaches on the Caribbean and Atlantic serve as departure points for maritime shipments. The Orinoco River system reaches deep into the interior and connects to Colombian river networks, and seizures along the road between Puerto Ayacucho and Ciudad Bolívar confirm that corridor as an active route linking inland production zones to Atlantic exit points.
How the Cocaine Moves
Traffickers use three broad methods, each exploiting a different enforcement gap.
Maritime routes carry the largest volume. Fishing boats, go-fast speedboats, and commercial container ships leave Venezuelan ports and coastline for Caribbean islands, Central America, and transatlantic runs to West Africa, where overland networks carry the cocaine on to Europe. Puerto Cabello and other commercial ports have been used to hide cocaine inside legitimate cargo.
Aerial routes rely on clandestine airstrips, concentrated in border states like Apure and Zulia. Small aircraft fly loads to Central American and Caribbean transshipment points, often with transponders switched off. The ELN, a Colombian guerrilla group, has established at least ten camps in Zulia, some with their own landing strips.
Land and river routes bring finished cocaine from Colombia across uncontrolled crossings, then feed it into the Orinoco system and the road network running toward the coast. Rivers originally used by guerrilla groups for logistics have become drug highways in their own right.
The product mix is also starting to shift. The DEA’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment flagged “tusi,” a pink-colored cocktail that can combine ketamine, cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl, with Tren de Aragua identified as a distributor in specific regional markets. The same report noted that fentanyl was co-identified in more than 25 percent of federal cocaine submissions in 2024.2Drug Enforcement Administration. 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment
Who Runs It: The Cartel de los Soles
U.S. prosecutors describe the “Cartel de los Soles,” or Cartel of the Suns, as a decentralized network of senior Venezuelan military and government officials rather than a traditional hierarchical cartel. The name refers to the sun insignias worn on Venezuelan generals’ uniforms. According to federal charging documents, these officials authorized multi-ton cocaine shipments through Venezuelan airspace and waters, provided armed protection for drug loads, and used state military assets for logistics.
On July 25, 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department designated the Cartel de los Soles as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity, and the State Department issued its own terrorist designation.3United States Department of State. Terrorist Designations of Cartel de los Soles The designations freeze any U.S.-held property of the organization and broadly prohibit U.S. persons from transacting with it.
Colombian guerrilla groups also operate inside Venezuela with reported cooperation from parts of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces. The ELN has effectively converted stretches of Venezuelan territory into an operational sanctuary, controlling corridors from the border through Zulia to Caribbean exit points. A significant share of cocaine production has reportedly moved into remote parts of Venezuela as Colombian authorities push harder on their side of the frontier.
Tren de Aragua
Tren de Aragua, which began as a prison gang in Venezuela in the mid-2000s, now operates across the Western Hemisphere, including inside the United States. Where the Cartel de los Soles works through military and government channels, Tren de Aragua runs at the street and mid-tier level: drug distribution, human trafficking, extortion, and armed robbery. It also helps move cocaine from Venezuela to the United States, and its leader, Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, was charged in the superseding Maduro indictment, with a reward of up to $5 million offered for information leading to his arrest. Since January 2025, the Department of Justice has federally indicted more than 260 Tren de Aragua members through Joint Task Force Vulcan.4Department of Justice. Justice Department Highlights Nationwide Crackdown on Tren de Aragua
The U.S. Criminal Case Against Maduro
On March 26, 2020, the Department of Justice unsealed indictments charging Maduro and 14 current and former Venezuelan officials with narco-terrorism, cocaine trafficking, and related offenses.5Department of Justice. Nicolas Maduro Moros and 14 Current and Former Venezuelan Officials Charged with Narco-Terrorism The lead indictment in the Southern District of New York charged Maduro, National Constituent Assembly head Diosdado Cabello Rondón, former military intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal Barrios, and others with conspiring to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine while providing material support to the FARC, a designated foreign terrorist organization.6Department of Justice. Superseding Indictment Separate indictments in Washington, D.C., and the Southern District of Florida named Venezuela’s defense minister and supreme court chief justice, among others.
The case expanded over time. Co-defendant Clíver Alcalá Cordones pled guilty in June 2023 to conspiring to provide material support to the FARC. Carvajal Barrios pled guilty in June 2025 to narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges.7Department of Justice. Sealed Superseding Indictment A superseding indictment the same year extended the conspiracy period through 2025 and added new defendants, including Maduro’s wife, Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, and his son, Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra.
The State Department escalated the reward offered through its Narcotics Rewards Program in parallel. It began at $15 million in 2020, rose to $25 million in January 2025, and reached $50 million on August 7, 2025.1United States Department of State. Nicolas Maduro Moros (Captured) On January 3, 2026, U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife in Caracas and flew them by helicopter to Manhattan, where they were taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Maduro is awaiting trial. Cabello Rondón remains a fugitive.
U.S. Sanctions on Venezuelan Trafficking Networks
Alongside criminal prosecution, the U.S. government uses financial sanctions to cut trafficking networks off from the dollar economy. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control administers the Venezuela Sanctions Regulations under 31 CFR Part 591, built on a series of executive orders starting with E.O. 13692 in 2015 and expanded through 2019.8eCFR. 31 CFR Part 591 – Venezuela Sanctions Regulations OFAC has also designated numerous Venezuelan officials under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, freezing their U.S. assets and prohibiting U.S. persons from doing business with them.9U.S. Department of the Treasury. Treasury Designates Four Venezuelan Officials for Providing Arms and Security to the FARC
The reach is wide. Any U.S. person or company processing a transaction that touches a designated individual or entity risks serious penalties, and U.S. banks must screen transactions against OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals list.
Penalties for Sanctions Violations
U.S. persons who deal with sanctioned Venezuelan individuals face penalties under two overlapping frameworks: the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
Under the Kingpin Act, individual criminal violations carry up to 10 years in prison plus fines under Title 18. Corporate officers and agents who knowingly participate can face up to 30 years and fines up to $5 million. Entity criminal fines reach $10 million per violation, and civil penalties go up to $1 million per violation, imposed administratively by the Treasury Secretary.10GovInfo. 21 USC 1906 – Enforcement IEEPA adds its own criminal penalties of up to $1 million and 20 years imprisonment for willful violations, and the two frameworks can apply together.
OFAC’s enforcement guidelines also give companies that find a violation themselves a strong incentive to come forward. In non-egregious cases, voluntary self-disclosure caps the base civil penalty at one-half the transaction value, up to $188,850 per violation. First-time violators can get another reduction of up to 25 percent, and substantial cooperation can bring the penalty down a further 25 to 40 percent.11eCFR. Appendix A to Part 501 – Economic Sanctions Enforcement Guidelines Waiting for OFAC to find the problem first means significantly higher base penalties, especially in egregious cases.
Interdiction at Sea
Enforcement is not only paper. U.S. Southern Command’s Joint Interagency Task Force-South coordinates detection across the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, and Coast Guard cutters handle most of the physical interdictions. In fiscal year 2025, the Coast Guard seized nearly 510,000 pounds of cocaine in those two regions, the largest annual total in the service’s history and more than triple its average of 167,000 pounds.12United States Coast Guard News. Coast Guard Sets Historic Record with Amount of Cocaine Seized in FY25 Even at that level, the 200-plus metric tons estimated to move through Venezuela each year suggest interdiction catches only part of the flow.
Venezuela’s Own Drug Laws
Venezuela’s domestic statute, the Organic Law on Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances, looks severe on paper. Trafficking, manufacturing, or distributing controlled substances carries 10 to 20 years. Cultivation of coca and other drug crops carries the same range. Laundering drug proceeds brings 15 to 25 years. Supplying drugs to minors, people with disabilities, or indigenous community members carries 14 to 20 years, and using minors to commit trafficking offenses pushes that to 15 to 25 years.13UNODC. Organic Law on Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances Possession beyond personal use carries four to six years.
Enforcement has been another matter. U.S. prosecutors have accused the officials responsible for drug enforcement of running the trafficking networks themselves, and the statutory penalties have operated largely in theory.
Regional Spillover
Roughly eight million people have left Venezuela in recent years, and the drug trade has helped sustain the conditions driving them out. The pressure falls hardest on Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and Caribbean nations, where the same border regions carry both displaced populations and drug loads. Tren de Aragua’s expansion across multiple countries shows how Venezuela’s instability has exported organized crime alongside its migration crisis.
Whether Maduro’s capture reshapes any of this depends on what the structure looks like without him. The cooperating witnesses the Southern District of New York case has already produced will determine whether prosecutors can reach the broader network or whether the routes outlast the man at the top.