MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
All right. Just to get everybody up to speed, this evening, the ousted Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, has arrived at Stewart Air National Guard Base in New York State. That's according to video footage on CNN. A figure who appeared to be Maduro, appeared to be shackled and flanked by U.S. law enforcement, was escorted down the stairs of the plane across the tarmac. Let's go to Florida, where Venezuelan expatriates have been celebrating. South Florida is home to the nation's largest Venezuelan population, and hundreds of them turned out in what appeared to be a spontaneous gathering early this morning in a Miami suburb.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) Libertad, libertad, libertad, libertad.
KELLY: Libertad, they are calling there. NPR's Greg Allen spent the day talking to Venezuelans and Venezuelan Americans. Hi, Greg.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Fair to say Venezuelans are mostly happy about Maduro's ouster? What were you hearing?
ALLEN: Right. Well, you know, as you know, this is a community of people here in South Florida who fled the regimes of Hugo Chavez and his successor, Maduro. So this is a celebration, hands down. Everybody was very much on board here. It began before dawn, right after Trump posted on social media the news that U.S. forces had taken Maduro and his wife. Several hundred people turned out at this popular gathering spot in Doral, a Miami suburb. It's called the El Arepazo restaurant. One of the people there was 18-year-old Zoely Gutierrez (ph). She was there with her mother.
ZOELY GUTIERREZ: My mom woke me up this morning at 8. She's like, they took him, and I'm like, who'd they take? And she's like, Maduro. They took him. And I woke up, and we were like, let's go, let's go.
ALLEN: You know, there were Venezuelan flags everywhere today. Vendors were selling them. Lots of singing and hugging. It was a real party.
KELLY: Yeah. Say more about what this might mean for Venezuelans who came to Florida, settled in Florida after fleeing the Maduro regime.
ALLEN: Right. Well, you have, you know, hundreds of thousands of people who've come over here over the last two decades, you know, families and individuals, families. And, you know, as one person said to me, before, we had hoped we could go back. Now we actually think we have a process. In other words, people are watching for what happens next and when it might be safe for them to actually go back to Venezuela. Michelle Guerra is a Venezuelan I spoke with today, and she works for a city councilwoman in Doral.
MICHELLE GUERRA: I know for a fact that a lot of people want to go back. The issue is, do we have a safe environment to be able to grow, to be able to, you know, just prosper as human beings in what this world is nowadays?
KELLY: Greg, I'm curious what you're hearing from folks there about this plan from President Trump that the U.S. is now going to run Venezuela, that there will be a safe transition. What's the reaction?
ALLEN: Well, it was interesting. I talked to several people about this, and many people just were not ready to focus on anything except for the fact that Maduro is out. They were just so happy about that, they didn't want to talk about next, and I think they're willing to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt. One person, though, that I did speak to - Daniel Escalante (ph), who was there with his family. He's been in the U.S. for 26 years. He said it's a good thing Maduro is out, but he is actually concerned about now what happens next.
DANIEL ESCALANTE: The U.S. is going to stay in power until a transition is happening. You know, that could be a while. That could be tomorrow. It just doesn't - we don't know. And that could be a little bit problematic, just because he claims that Venezuela's still free, but who knows, really?
KELLY: I do want to ask about domestic politics here in the States because President Trump did really well with Venezuelan American voters in the last election. What are you hearing now?
ALLEN: Right, well, I think some of that support started to flag in recent months. Polls show that there had - dropped among Venezuelans because of the immigration crackdown. The Trump administration lifted temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans over the last several months. Many have to now go back to the country that's still in turmoil, and Escalante says, he knows people who didn't come out to celebrate today 'cause they're worried...
KELLY: Right.
ALLEN: ...About being deported.
ESCALANTE: The first thought that a lot of people said is like, I'm not going there, probably there's an ICE raid that's going to happen. So people are still afraid of ICE and still of getting deported and not seeing their families.
KELLY: One of many voices we are hearing there from Greg Allen's reporting in Miami. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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