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Expressions of hope on the Upper West Side from Venezuelan ex-pats
By
Arya Sundaram
Published Jan 5, 2026
Modified Jan 5, 2026
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Arya Sundaram/Gothamist
By
Arya Sundaram
Published Jan 5, 2026
Modified Jan 5, 2026
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New Yorker and Harlemite Héctor Arguinzones, an immigrant from Venezuela, said Monday he’s hopeful and anxious about the future of the country he left behind, following the U.S. capture of President Nicolás Maduro, now jailed in Brooklyn.
“If the U.S. took this step, that means they now know the destiny of Venezuela is in their hands,” said Arguinzones, an asylum recipient who has lived in the United States for over a decade and co-founder and director of the New York-based nonprofit Venezuelan and Immigrants Aid.
Arguinzones discussed the sudden turn of events at a community food and aid giveaway at St. Paul and St. Andrew United Methodist Church on the Upper West Side, where immigrants from a host of countries, Venezuela included, received assistance.
Other Venezuelan New Yorkers at the church event said they shared similar hopes for Venezuela, on the same day Maduro was arraigned in federal court in Manhattan. An estimated 14,000 Venezuelan immigrants were living in New York City in 2021, a number that grew to nearly 20,000 by 2024, according to U.S. Census data.
While protests, in New York City and elsewhere, have greeted the Trump administration's action, the intervention received mostly positive reviews at the church event, organized by the VIA group.
Elizabeth Rodriguez, 58, said she was overjoyed to learn of the news of Maduro’s capture on Saturday morning.
“It’s for our betterment. It’s for a better future,” said Rodriguez, an asylum-seeker living in Upper Manhattan for the past year. “It’s for Venezuela to recover and return to being the Venezuela that we had more than 30 years ago.”
Rodriguez said her family back home in Venezuela shared in her hopes, but remained publicly silent for fear of incurring the wrath of the current regime, whose leaders initially spoke out against the U.S. action.
“They can’t get excited,” Rodriguez said. “They can’t express themselves,”
Arguinzones says his family in Venezuela has similarly expressed, in sum, “hope and fear” about their country’s future. He said Venezuelans in their homeland refrain from expressing their honest opinions on their president’s capture, for fear of being targeted for reprisals by their country’s ruling party, which remains in power.
Arguinzones’ relatives in Venezuela stayed home all day Saturday out of fear. When they finally left, they were met with long lines for food and speculators selling household items at a hefty markup, Arguinzones said.
Niurka Meléndez, Arguinzones’ wife, told Gothamist a kind of “polarization” emerged in the days after Maduro’s capture. She said she’s been criticized for being a “Trumpist” after expressing her support for the capture of Maduro, though she said she does not support President Donald Trump.
“I don’t agree with going against the law,” said Meléndez, 53, as she addressed the crowd at the VIA event. “But how can we play by the rules with criminals?” In response, an immigrant who said she was from the Dominican Republic, voiced her support in Spanish, saying, “thank god Venezuela is free now. ”
She received raucous cheers from the crowd.
Arguinzones was about to go to bed around 1 a.m. on Saturday in the family's Harlem apartment when he received a shocking message from a family member: a photo of red flashes and plumes of smoke hovering over Caracas, Venezuela.
A torrent of messages soon flooded his family WhatsApp chat.
“What’s happening in Caracas?” one family member asked in Spanish. Others in the Capitol sent photos and videos of the explosions and lines of helicopters zipping through the smoke. Confused and anxious, Arguinzones began scrolling the web for an explanation.
Hours later, around 4:30 a.m., Trump confirmed the rumors in a post on Truth Social: the United States had captured Maduro.
“Justice finally came to Venezuela,” Arguinzones recalls thinking when he learned the news.
Crowds assembled in Times Square mostly decried the action on Saturday and near the federal prison in Brooklyn where Maduro was being held on Sunday, and outside the courthouse where he and his wife, politician and attorney Cilia Flores, were arraigned on Monday afternoon.
Both entered pleas of not guilty to charges including narco-terrorism and cocaine-importation conspiracy.
This story was updated with additional comment.
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Asylum Seekers
Race And Justice Unit
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Arya Sundaram
Arya is a reporter covering race and justice. Got a tip? Email: [email protected] or reach Arya on Signal at 512-650-8767.
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