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The Venezuelan opposition leader Andrés Velásquez stated this Monday that the deportation of Colombian businessman Alex Saab from Venezuela to the United States deepens the internal division within chavismo, in a political reading that suggests the collapse of the Maduro project under the pressure of U.S. judicial actions.
"The delivery of Alex Saab to U.S. justice deepens the division within chavismo. Accusations are flying back and forth from one side to the other," wrote the former governor of Bolívar state on his X account. Velásquez added that this delivery makes it clear that the "chavismo-madurismo" has been "nothing more than a scam that collapses under its own weight."
Saab landed on Saturday at the Opa-locka airport, in Miami-Dade County, escorted by federal agents, including those from the DEA, as reported by the EFE agency.
The Administrative Service of Identification, Migration, and Foreigners (SAIME) of Venezuela confirmed the deportation through a statement on Instagram: "The deportation measure was adopted considering that the aforementioned Colombian citizen is involved in the commission of various crimes in the United States of America, as is publicly known."
The delivery of Saab occurs in a politically transformed context in Venezuela since January 3, 2026, when U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in Caracas during the so-called "Operation Absolute Resolution". Both were transferred to New York, where they pleaded not guilty before Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York, facing charges of narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine.
After Maduro's capture, Delcy Rodríguez assumed the role of acting president of Venezuela and dismissed Saab as Minister of Industry and National Production on January 17, 2026, just two weeks after the U.S. operation.
On February 4, 2026, Saab was arrested in Venezuela during a joint operation between SEBIN and the FBI, and was detained at El Helicoide, the headquarters of Venezuelan intelligence in Caracas.
Saab, aged 54 years and described as a personal friend of Maduro, has an extensive legal history in the United States. In July 2019, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida charged him along with his partner Álvaro Pulido with eight counts of money laundering related to a scheme involving approximately 350 million dollars linked to the CLAP program for subsidized food distribution. He was arrested in Cape Verde in June 2020 and extradited to the United States in October 2021.
In December 2023, he was released as part of a prisoner exchange negotiated by then-President Joe Biden and returned to Venezuela. He now faces new corruption charges filed in Miami in January 2026.
The political reaction to the deportation was not limited to the Venezuelan opposition. The Cuban-American congressman Carlos Giménez sent a direct message to Diosdado Cabello —one of the strongmen of Chavismo— by publishing the wanted poster offering 25 million dollars by the United States for his capture: "Diosdado, you are next."
Saab thus joins Maduro and Flores in the dock of U.S. justice, in what Velásquez interprets as the definitive collapse of a power structure that, in his view, "is falling under its own weight."
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