Nicolas Maduro

About 30 people attended a Venezuelan advocacy event, held in Golden Gate at the Los Angeles Adult Day Care facility, where attendees expressed their gratitude to the Trump administration and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart for the support and actions taken to "help the Venezuelan people" bolster the base for a blossoming democracy.

There are mixed emotions after the United States forcefully removed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro due to his alleged connections with South American drug cartels.

Nearly a year after first sharing his story, Erick Tovar says life looks very different. Tovar, now 22, is a junior at Florida Gulf Coast University from Venezuela living in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. “Definitely, a lot of things have changed, as far as the government, as far as the politics, as far as the general hope that we have as of right now,” Tovar said. “My current hope is that the people of Venezuela that are still there get to experience freedom.”

Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro has arrived in the United States to face criminal charges. He was captured in an audacious military operation that President Donald Trump said would set the U.S. up to “run” the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations. Maduro landed Saturday evening at a small airport in New York following the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife from their home in a military base in the capital, Caracas. The couple will face prosecution in connection with a Justice Department indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.

Tensions are beginning to boil over in South America, as the United States contemplates taking military action against Venezuela.