A White House social media post misleadingly links deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to the U.S. fentanyl crisis.
The XPost includes a video featuring parents who lost their children to fentanyl overdoses and thanking President Donald Trump for capturing Maduro.
“The Angel family thanks President Trump for saving lives and arresting Mr. Maduro, the central figure in flooding America with deadly fentanyl,” the White House’s Jan. 5 X-Post said. “Justice is being served.”
U.S. forces abducted Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home in Caracas in the early hours of January 3. On January 5, the two pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges in New York federal court.
The White House’s post is not the first time the Trump administration has accused Maduro of trafficking fentanyl into the United States. President Trump cited powerful synthetic opioids, which are responsible for most drug overdose deaths in the United States, to justify pressure on Venezuela in the months before Maduro’s arrest.
However, neither Venezuela nor Maduro is involved in smuggling fentanyl into the United States. Most of the fentanyl in the United States comes from Mexico and is made with chemicals from China, according to U.S. government reports and drug policy experts.
The White House did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment.
Vice President J.D. Vance mentioned fentanyl in a Jan. 4 post, the day before the White House post, saying that cocaine was “the primary drug trafficked out of Venezuela” and that “certainly there is a lot of fentanyl coming out of Mexico. That continues to be the focus of Mexico policy and why President Trump closed the border on day one.”
Drug experts have previously told PolitiFact that Venezuela acts as a transit country for some cocaine trafficking, in part because neighboring Colombia is the world’s major cocaine producer. However, most of the cocaine that enters the United States does not pass through Venezuela.
Government report says fentanyl doesn’t come from Venezuela
The Drug Enforcement Administration’s annual National Drug Threat Assessment Report has long pointed to Mexico and China as the countries responsible for illegal fentanyl in the United States. The agency’s reports from 2017 to 2025 do not list Venezuela as a fentanyl producer or trafficker.
Most illegal fentanyl enters the U.S. through official ports of entry via the southern border, and 83.5 percent of smugglers in 2024 were U.S. citizens.
“There is no evidence that fentanyl or fentanyl-laced cocaine is coming from Venezuela or anywhere else in South America,” David Smilde, a sociologist at Tulane University who studies violence in Venezuela, told PolitiFact in September.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s World Drug Report also notes that Mexico is the country of origin for the most fentanyl seized in the United States.
The number of fentanyl overdose deaths in the United States has decreased recently. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 43,000 synthetic opioid deaths from May 2024 to April 2025, mostly from fentanyl, down from nearly 70,000 the year before.
“The United States has suffered a massive opioid and fentanyl overdose crisis, especially in recent years,” John Walsh, director of drug policy at the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights advocacy group in the Americas, previously told PolitiFact. “I don’t think it has anything to do with South America or the Caribbean.”
The Justice Department first indicted Maduro in 2020 for drug-related activities dating back to 1999. A newly unsealed and updated indictment filed in the Southern District of New York charges Maduro and two co-defendants with a narco-terrorism conspiracy, and he, Flores and four other co-defendants with conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of a machine gun.
The indictment describes Maduro as an illegitimate leader who enriched his family and consolidated his power by transporting cocaine under the protection of Venezuelan law enforcement.
The 25-page document does not mention fentanyl or fentanyl trafficking.
our verdict
The Trump White House said Maduro was “flooding America with deadly fentanyl.”
Drug experts and official government and international reports point to Mexico and China as the countries primarily responsible for manufacturing and trafficking illicit fentanyl reaching the United States. Most of the fentanyl in the United States comes from Mexico, manufactured with chemicals from China, and is smuggled by American citizens through official ports of entry on the southern border.
The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Maduro on cocaine-related charges. The indictment does not mention fentanyl.
We rate this statement “False”.
