Some 2,000 miles (3,200km) now separate Venezuelans from Nicolas Maduro, their abducted president, who United States special forces have flown to New York.

But Mario, a Caracas resident, is worried about celebrating publicly against the ouster of a leader who oversaw a government apparatus that to many Venezuelans became synonymous with repression.

Maduro’s government remains mostly intact after his Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was sworn in – with US President Donald Trump’s blessing – as acting president on Monday. Her track record within the Maduro establishment has many Venezuelans on edge; deleting texts, avoiding talking about politics in public, and self-censoring on social media, according to people interviewed by Al Jazeera.

Since the US bombing, Venezuelan police have announced the arrest of at least four people for celebrating Maduro’s capture or mocking the former leader.

“[The police] apprehended two citizens in Guaraque who were celebrating the kidnapping of President Maduro,” read one statement from police in the western city of Merida; “Two arrested for incitement to hatred and treason,” read another from authorities in the state of Carabobo.

The crackdown comes after the government on Saturday decreed a state of emergency, ordering security forces to “immediately undertake the search and capture … of any person involved in promoting or supporting the armed attack by the United States of America” and to prosecute them.

Screenshots of the decree have circulated on social media, contributing to what some residents say is a chilling effect.

“The fear is that they will unjustly imprison you, prosecute you and charge you with whatever they want to charge you with and send you to prison,” said Mario in a phone interview from Caracas with Al Jazeera.

He said he’s no longer taking the main roads to avoid security checkpoints and run-ins with government-aligned paramilitary groups called colectivos. He also doesn’t post anything about the US attacks on social media and said he deletes any videos that could be perceived as provocation by the government.

Venezuela’s new interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, speaks to the media at the Foreign Office in Caracas, Venezuela, on Monday, August 11, 2025. She was vice president at the time [Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo]

‘Not a good sign’

As vice president, Rodriguez took control of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) in 2018, during one of the most repressive periods of Maduro’s rule.

“I think she is more pragmatic [than Maduro],” Laura Cristina Dib, Venezuela director at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) told Al Jazeera, “but that doesn’t mean she’s not part of the repressive apparatus as well.”

The United Nations has accused SEBIN of torturing dozens of opposition politicians, journalists and activists, including inside the infamous El Helicoide detention centre in Caracas.

On Tuesday, Rodriguez appointed former SEBIN director Gustavo Enrique Gonzalez Lopez as the new head of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), which was also accused of human rights abuses by the UN.

“This is not a good sign,” said Dib, adding that Gonzalez Lopez was one of the first Venezuelan officials to be sanctioned during the Obama administration and he continued the policy of torture at El Helicoide as SEBIN director.

He also helped oversee the Liberation of the People (OLP), a years-long operation which rooted out dissent using abuse and extrajudicial killings, resulting in the deaths of hundreds and possibly thousands of people, mostly in poor neighbourhoods.

Gonzalez Lopez’s latest appointment, Dib said, “is not a step in the right direction”.

Protesters demand the end of isolation as a state policy and the release of what they consider political prisoners, outside the United Nations office in Caracas, Venezuela, on Friday, March 28, 2025 [Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo]

‘Shock factor’

Almost a year and a half on from the 2024 elections, in which Maduro crushed protests against his fraudulent election, Carlos Lusverti, an investigator at the Center for Human Rights at the Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas, thinks those crackdowns remain in Venezuelans’ psyche.

“At that time, there was a general wave of arrests and repression that I think generally sensitised the population in terms of silencing any expression that could be understood as criticism of the government,” Lusverti told Al Jazeera.

He said the “shock factor” from the recent US bombardment only adds to the paranoia, and some Venezuelans fear the current government may revert to its old tactics.

“It’s terrifying that you can be arrested just for having a meme [about Maduro] on your phone,” Viviana, a 31-year-old who sells flowers in Caracas, told Al Jazeera. “That’s the fear that exists today, and that’s why people avoid saying anything or commenting on things on the street.”