venezuela
Kyle Moran
Share
Trump Knows Maduro's a Terrorist. So Why Are We Pumping His Oil?
by Kyle Moran
One year ago, six armed men, later identified as Tren de Aragua members, stormed Colorado apartment buildings with assault rifles. These weren’t just gang members, but foot soldiers of a criminal enterprise orchestrated and sponsored by the Maduro regime itself. Homeland Security now says the gang has infiltrated over a dozen states, running sex trafficking rings and pushing drugs that are killing Americans across the country.
Attorney General Pam Bondi clearly understands the threat Maduro and his cronies are to the United States. Last week, she doubled the bounty for his capture from $25 million to $50 million, calling him “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world and a threat to our national security.”
She isn’t alone. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been equally unflinching, declaring that Maduro leads “a narco-terror organization which has taken possession of a country.” President Trump himself has been a longtime backer of the Venezuelan opposition: He invited its leader, Juan Guaido, to the State of the Union back in 2020, and one of his first moves after taking office again this year was to terminate Chevron’s oil license to operate in the country. He backed this up with 25% tariffs on any country importing Venezuelan oil.
Now Trump is backing up rhetoric with warships. The administration deployed three Aegis-class guided-missile destroyers—the USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham, and USS Sampson—to the waters off Venezuela. Armed with Tomahawk missiles, anti-air systems, and anti-submarine capabilities, these vessels bring serious firepower typically reserved for state-level conflicts. They're now empowered to intercept suspected smuggling vessels and gather intelligence on the narco-regime's operations.
An amphibious squadron with approximately 4,500 servicemen has joined them in the southern Caribbean, along with surveillance aircraft and at least one attack submarine. The deployment, expected to last several months, represents the most significant U.S. military presence near Venezuela in years. The White House has emphasized its readiness to leverage "every element of American power" against narcotics threats.
Maduro’s response has been predictably unhinged. Denouncing the deployment as “imperialist aggression,” he ordered the mobilization of 4.5 million militia members across Venezuela.
It is this moral clarity—which stands in such stark contrast to the previous administration’s—that made last month’s reversal all the more inexplicable. After a prisoner swap that saw 252 Venezuelans traded for just 10 Americans, the administration allowed Chevron to restart pumping 240,000 barrels per day. The same week that the Treasury designated Cartel de Los Soles as a terrorist organization, we handed them back their oil lifeline.
That’s the problem with engaging with terrorists and narco-regimes: It normalizes the abnormal. Every barrel of oil pumped, every dollar that flows through those joint ventures, legitimizes a regime that’s flooding American streets with Venezuelan gang members and lethal narcotics. The DOJ’s indictment back in April of 27 Tren de Aragua members for racketeering, murder, and forcing women into sex slavery didn’t happen in Caracas—it happened in New York. This is not some far away threat to stability overseas, it’s a threat to our domestic security.
The administration’s defenders point to China. Without Chevron’s 240,000 barrels—a quarter of Venezuela’s output—much of that oil goes to Beijing. And to their credit, we should put pressure on China to stop supporting Caracas. But we don’t benefit at all by partaking in it; China already has plenty of alternative energy sources, they are buying from Venezuela in no small part to shore up support for the regime. We’re essentially helping to subsidize China’s geopolitical partner.
The Venezuelan opposition, meanwhile, has begged the international community for years to stop feeding the regime. They’ve watched as oil revenues shot up after Biden made a similar move to expand drilling in Venezuela while being openly hostile towards domestic energy production. Maduro was laughing all the way to the bank.
Meanwhile, over 7.8 million Venezuelans have fled their homeland since 2013. That’s nearly a quarter of the population—the largest refugee crisis in the Western Hemisphere's history. And none of this needed to have happened: Before Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez’ socialist revolution, the country was one of the most prosperous on the continent.
The $50 million bounty demonstrates this administration recognizes Maduro as the narco-terrorist he is. Rubio's designation cuts through years of diplomatic euphemism. Trump's initial termination of Chevron's license showed he learned from Biden's failures. But every barrel of oil we allow Chevron to pump sends cash straight into the coffers of a regime that has weaponized migration and gang violence against American communities.
The contradiction couldn't be starker: We have warships hunting Venezuelan drug smugglers in the Caribbean while simultaneously allowing American companies to fund the very regime that runs those smuggling operations. It's like deploying the DEA to a cartel compound while your accountant wires them operating expenses.
The choice before us is simple. Either we treat narco-states like narco-states—no exceptions, no oil deals, no pragmatic workarounds—or we invite the terror and crime they inherently bring. The victims of Tren de Aragua deserve better, and so do the American people more broadly. And frankly, after everything we've learned from the previous administration’s failures, this should be a no-brainer.
