The Forgotten Casualties of Operation Gideon: A Venezuelan Family’s Unending Nightmare

On January 30, just weeks after Nicolás Maduro’s arrest sent shockwaves through Venezuela, Juvenal José Secaya Torres walked out of Modelo prison at Bogotá believing he was finally free. The former Venezuelan military officer had served his full sentence in Colombia for his alleged involvement in Operation Gideon, the botched 2020 attempt to overthrow Mr. Maduro. He was told to complete routine paperwork to finalize his release. Instead, two Colombian police officers were waiting outside.They arrested Torres again on an international warrant he never knew existed. Now he sits in detention, awaiting extradition to Venezuela, where approximately 36 military members connected to Operation Gideon already languish in what his sister, Fatima Secaya Torres, describes as torture chambers. “How can my brother, who was under house arrest for years, and was in jail for another three years, how could it be that he didn’t even know that there was an international arrest warrant against him?” Ms. Torres tells The New York Sun from an undisclosed location in Colombia, where she has lived in exile since fleeing Venezuela with 14 family members in August 2019. “They just made him believe you have to go through some paperwork and then you’re free. You will be released, but then they arrest him again.”Ultimately, the Trump administration’s recent successful capture of Mr. Maduro has not brought relief to families involved in the ill-fated coup effort. The January re-arrest represents the latest chapter in a harrowing saga that has already cost the Torres family two lives, in addition to three brothers imprisoned across two countries and a 71-year-old mother held in solitary confinement in Venezuela on terrorism charges. Their ordeal illuminates the long, quiet shadow cast by Operation Gideon, the amphibious raid launched from Colombia on May 3, 2020, that the Maduro regime crushed within hours, killing at least eight participants and capturing dozens more.Operation Gideon was masterminded by former United States Army Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, who founded the private security firm Silvercorp USA. Mr. Goudreau claimed to have had a contract with then-Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó to organize a paramilitary force to capture Mr. Maduro. Mr. Guaidó denies authorizing the operation. Two other former American Special Forces soldiers, Airan Berry and Luke Denman, were captured during the failed beach landing and sentenced to 20 years in a Venezuelan prison. In 2024, both Americans were released as part of a prisoner exchange that also freed several Venezuelans imprisoned in the United States. Mr. Goudreau, who posted videos from his home in Florida taking credit for the operation, was arrested in New York in July 2024 on weapons smuggling charges. He was released on bond. A judge issued an arrest warrant for him in November 2025 after he failed to appear in court.A Family Torn Apart by Failed RebellionThe operation, however, shattered the Torres family before Ms. Torres even knew it was happening. Her cousin, Aron Perales Secaya, 33, died in the initial assault. “He got killed in the night between May 2 and May 3 when the operation was ongoing,” she says. “He was in a boat, and authorities apprehended the boat, and they killed him with a total of 21 shots.”Hours later, on May 4, her brother, Captain Antonio José Secaya Torres, was driving another boat from Colombia to Venezuela as part of the military effort when the engine failed. “They tracked him down with the help of helicopters and boats through sea, air, and land,” Ms. Torres explains. “To save his life, he just had to turn himself in.” Antonio has been imprisoned in Venezuela ever since, and is facing nearly six years behind bars.Yet the Venezuelan government’s vengeance extends far beyond those who actually participated in the raid. In September 2020, authorities arrested Ms. Torres’s two other brothers, Juvenal José and Mayor Juvenal, both retired Venezuelan military officers, at Bogotá for guilt by association. “They’ve been in Bogotá, but they never have been part of Gideon,” Ms. Torres insists. “But the Venezuelan prosecutor accused them of being part of Gideon as well because they arrested the other brother.”The family believes the regime knew Operation Gideon was coming. “When they entered from Colombia to Venezuela, there was a kind of infiltration,” Ms. Torres says. “The Venezuelan government knew that the operation was ongoing, and they were waiting basically for them.”Faced with lengthy Colombian prosecutions and advised that this was the only way out, Ms. Torres’s brothers accepted plea deals, confessing to crimes they insist they never committed. Colombian judges sentenced them for training foreign militaries on Colombian territory while Venezuela leveled far more serious political charges, including rebellion, terrorism, and arms trafficking. The brothers each received six-year sentences, with the promise of release after three years of good behavior followed by house arrest.Both served their time. Both were released to house arrest after three years. Yet when their sentences ended in January 2026, only Juvenal José walked free, straight into the trap that returned him to custody where he now awaits extradition to Venezuela. Mayor Juvenal was not released. “Both have been accused of the same crime, they went to different courts, and they were given the same sentence,” Ms. Torres says. “But the judge who is in charge of (Mayor) didn’t release him, which doesn’t make any sense.”Antonio continues to serve his time under house arrest in Venezuela.Constitutional Oath or Criminal Conspiracy?For the three Torres brothers, who all joined Venezuela’s military between 2002 and 2011, participation in or association with Operation Gideon represented a fulfillment rather than a betrayal of their oaths. “You have to understand, Venezuela is a failed state,” Ms. Torres says. “There’s no democracy there. So, we don’t have free judges. We don’t have free prosecutors.”Venezuela’s Public Ministry, which oversees prosecutors, continues to lack genuine independence under acting President Delcy Rodríguez following Mr. Maduro’s January 2026 ouster by United States forces. However, new amnesty legislation signed in February 2026 has prompted prosecutors to request courts to release hundreds of political prisoners, with over 1,500 applications processed and many already freed as a step toward reconciliation. The prosecutorial system has not undergone confirmed structural reforms to ensure impartiality, and non-independent courts persist amid ongoing transitional uncertainties.The family’s commitment to opposing the regime had already proven deadly before Operation Gideon. In March 2019, another cousin, whose name was not provided, was arrested during protests and tortured behind bars. “One morning, he was found dead in jail,” Ms. Torres says. “He got killed there.”These losses weighed on her brother, Antonio, as he decided whether to join the shadowy Gideon. “Our parents always said, ‘just do the correct thing in your life,’” Ms. Torres recalls. “And my brother said, ‘Well, we took an oath to serve our country. We didn’t take an oath to serve a corrupt politician. We took an oath to our Constitution. And as militaries, we couldn’t withstand a corrupt politician like Nicholás Maduro.’ So this was basically the reason why the one who is in jail in Venezuela decided to be part of that operation.”Ms. Torres invokes Article 53 of Venezuela’s Constitution, which she says obligates military members to protect the country. “What my brother and my cousin did was pretty much the same thing that Donald Trump did,” Ms. Torres says. “Donald Trump tried to get rid of Nicolás Maduro, and my family tried to do the same thing. And they tried. My brothers tried to stay with our Constitution. And the price they’re paying is high.”A Mother’s Solitary TormentThat price continues to mount. In September 2025, Venezuelan authorities arrested Ms. Torres’s mother on terrorism charges. She returned to Venezuela years after the family, driven by her husband’s cancer diagnosis, fled through illegal border crossings called trochas to Colombia in 2019. “My father had to leave because he wouldn’t have received any kind of medical treatment in Venezuela,” Ms. Torres says. Ms. Torres’s father died in Colombia in 2020. Her mother’s decision to return to Venezuela for family reasons afterward proved catastrophic. “She got arrested, and she basically disappeared for five months,” Ms. Torres says tearily. “No one knew about her. After five months, we finally got the news that she had been arrested.”Through sources monitoring the prison system, Ms. Torres relays that her mother, at 71 years old, is separated from other prisoners. “She’s suffering from several serious health problems, like high blood pressure. They don’t give her any medical attention,” she continues. “They give her only a bit of water every two days. She’s not even allowed to make a phone call. She’s without any contact, without any human contact.”The food provided is spoiled and inedible, Ms. Torres claims. The family has no access to legal documents or attorneys and cannot determine whether she has even been formally sentenced. Through contact with other families of Operation Gideon participants, Ms. Torres has also learned that her brother, Antonio José, and the other military prisoners face systematic torture in facilities that make even the notorious shopping-mall-turned political-prison, El Helicoide, look merciful by comparison. The Venezuelan military members connected to Gideon are held in the country’s most brutal facilities. The family lost all property and assets in Venezuela. Authorities removed her brothers’ children from school to use as leverage. The persecution followed them across the border. Colombian police raided Ms. Torres’s home, throwing both her and her 23-year-old disabled daughter to the floor during the search. “At one point, authorities started asking my brother about me, but they refused to give any information,” she recounts. “Then the police just knocked my door down and they did a house raid.”The experience has left Ms. Torres feeling abandoned by both countries. With no institutional support or legal assistance, Ms. Torres struggles to raise money for lawyers she cannot afford. The family’s suffering underscores the human cost of Operation Gideon that extends far beyond the immediate casualties of the failed raid. “Let the world know what’s happening,” she adds. “We don’t know what else to do.”

The Forgotten Casualties of Operation Gideon: A Venezuelan Family’s Unending Nightmare

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