Although dictator Nicolás Maduro is now gone from Venezuela, President Donald Trump's commitment to restoring democracy there seems uncertain — and expats here are especially anxious.
South Florida's Venezuelan community, the U.S.'s largest, cheered the U.S. military's capture of Maduro in Caracas on Saturday. But the mood changed afterward when Trump asserted that opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado "doesn't have the support or respect" inside Venezuela to lead the country; in fact, the Nobel peace prize winner has wide support, with a 72% approval rating from Venezuelans according to a 2025 poll.
Trump said Maduro's regime would remain intact — Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president on Monday — to maintain stability and accommodate U.S. interests such as access to Venezuela's oil reserves, the world's largest.
The vast majority of the Venezuelan diaspora, here and around the world, are strongly aligned with Machado and the opposition. Many worked hard to help Venezuela's democracy movement secure proof of its landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election that Maduro stole.
As a result Trump's Machado snub and his administrative deal with Rodríguez initially worried many expats — who suddenly wondered if a transition to democracy was the priority in the U.S.'s post-Maduro plan.
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"To hear Trump say that was very jarring," said Moraima Garcia, a Venezuelan expat and tech marketing executive in Palmetto Bay.
Garcia played a key fundraising role for the opposition before the 2024 election, which was won by opposition candidate Edmundo González, who was a substitute for Machado after Maduro barred her from running.
"In the diaspora we see ourselves as part of the [opposition] resistance," she told WLRN. "People treat us like passive actors in this whole thing, and we're not — so at first we were startled" by Trump's remarks.
Acknowledging that angst, Miami's Republican congressional delegation is insisting to expats that Machado will still figure prominently in Venezuela's democratic restoration, especially if and when new elections are held in the coming months.
At a press conference in the Venezuelan enclave of Doral on Monday, U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez — who after Maduro's ouster on Saturday said on social media that González should now be recognized as Venezuela's rightful president — changed his position and said it was better under the "new reality" there to wait for a new election that Machado can run in.
U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar suggested that what Trump actually meant about Machado is that she doesn't have the support or respect of Rodríguez and the other remaining regime leaders, especially the military — who oppose the democratic opposition taking power — to be inserted as Venezuela's new leader at the moment without risking more upheaval.
On Tuesday, Machado spoke with Sen. Rick Scott, R-Florida, who posted a video on X saying that Machado thanked Trump for his "bold action to hold Maduro and his thugs accountable."
Transition will take time
Either way, many expats now say the diaspora now realizes a transition to democracy will take time.
"What you need to have is a modicum of stability to work with, which is what they're doing," said Beatrice Rangel of the Inter-American Institute for Democracy in Miami, who was chief of staff to the late Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez.
"What you hope is that what happened to Maduro will create infighting and animosities inside the regime that will bring it down and facilitate the kind of leadership transition we want."
In the meantime, expats like Garcia emphasize the diaspora needs to work especially hard with the U.S. and international community to lean on Rodríguez and the regime to assist and not obstruct that transition — starting with releasing Venezuela's almost 1,000 political prisoners.
"We understand that transitions are tricky, and I'm telling other Venezuelans to take a step back now and see the larger picture we have to work with," said Garcia.
"But as a diaspora we also have to be more disciplined than ever. The diaspora is not going to settle for Maduro 2.0 as this transition process plays out. That's unacceptable for us."
Rangel agreed.
"At this point in time," she said, "if we're really talking not just about regime leadership change after Maduro but actual regime change, an announcement should have been made about liberating the political prisoners."
Garcia and most expats WLRN spoke with say they're confident Machado will eventually be the next president of Venezuela.
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