As President Donald Trump celebrated the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and cast his government’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, as the United States’ preferred partner to stabilize the country, U.S. law enforcement records suggest a far more complicated reality.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has long monitored Rodríguez, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press and confirmed by multiple current and former U.S. officials. In 2022, she was classified as a “priority target” — a designation reserved for suspects believed to have a “significant impact” on the drug trade, the records show.
The revelation comes at a tense moment, just weeks after Rodríguez assumed the role of acting president following Maduro’s arrest on U.S. drug trafficking charges.
Trump has repeatedly praised her and suggested she could help guide Venezuela toward stability and U.S. cooperation.
Yet DEA files dating back to at least 2018 indicate ongoing concern about her activities, including alleged links to drug trafficking, money laundering, and gold smuggling.
According to the records, the DEA has built a detailed intelligence dossier on Rodríguez over several years. It includes allegations from a confidential informant in 2021 claiming she used hotels on the Caribbean resort island of Isla Margarita as fronts for money laundering.
The documents also link her to Alex Saab, a Maduro associate and alleged financial fixer, who was arrested by U.S. authorities in 2020 on money laundering charges.
Although Saab was later pardoned by President Joe Biden in 2023 as part of a prisoner exchange, DEA investigators continued to examine connections between his operations and Rodríguez.
Despite these allegations, the U.S. government has never publicly accused Rodríguez of criminal wrongdoing. Unlike Maduro and more than a dozen current Venezuelan officials indicted on drug trafficking charges, Rodríguez has not been formally charged.
The AP reported that Rodríguez’s name appears in nearly a dozen DEA investigations, spanning offices from Paraguay and Ecuador to Phoenix and New York. Several of these inquiries are still active, although the agency did not provide details about their specific focus.
Three current and former DEA officials, who reviewed the documents at the AP’s request, said the files show a sustained and intense interest in Rodríguez throughout her time as vice president. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing investigations.
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The “priority target” label is not assigned lightly. It requires substantial evidence and documentation to justify additional investigative resources. But the DEA records obtained by the AP do not clarify why Rodríguez was elevated to that status.
Analysts say Rodríguez’s rise reflects the nature of power in Venezuela, where political authority and criminal enterprise are deeply intertwined.
“The current Venezuela government is a criminal-hybrid regime,” said Steve Dudley, co-director of InSight Crime, a research organization focused on organized crime. “The only way you reach a position of power in the regime is by, at the very least, abetting criminal activities.”
Rodríguez, 56, has been a central figure in Maduro’s inner circle since 2018, serving as vice president and later becoming acting president. Her political ascent has been marked by both diplomatic outreach and accusations of authoritarian consolidation.
During the first Trump administration, she sought to improve relations with the U.S., hiring lobbyists and even directing state oil funds to support Trump’s inaugural committee. However, the effort collapsed after Washington demanded free elections and imposed sanctions on her in 2018, accusing her of helping Maduro maintain power.
Beyond drug allegations, DEA records indicate investigators also examined possible links between Rodríguez and government contracts tied to Alex Saab, as well as deals involving her longtime partner’s family.
Investigative reporting has shown that companies linked to the brother of Rodríguez’s partner received more than $650 million in Venezuelan government contracts between 2017 and 2019.