State Department warns US citizens to leave Venezuela

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth praised the U.S. operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife.

He also praised Trump's leadership and praised the actions as "America first."

"As the President said, our adversaries remain on notice. America can project our will anywhere, anytime," Hegseth said.

"President Trump is deadly serious about stopping the flow of gangs and violence to our country, deadly serious about stopping the flow of drugs and poison to our people, deadly serious about getting back the oil that was stolen from us and deadly serious about reestablishing American deterrence and dominance in the Western Hemisphere," he added.

The president announced that the U.S. will be "running the country" as it transitions into new leadership.

"We can't take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn't have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind," he said.

Trump added that the oil business in Venezuela was "a bust," and that American oil companies will be spending "billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country."

Maduro is expected to arrive at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay before being transferred to an FBI plane en route to New York, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

-ABC News' Pierre Thomas, Sam Sweeney and Katherine Faulders

A source familiar with the operation told ABC News that the CIA "had a small team clandestinely on the ground starting in August that was able to provide extraordinary insight into Maduro’s pattern of life that made grabbing him seamless."

CIA Director Ratcliffe, along with Stephen Miller, Rubio and Hegseth, "formed a core team working this issue for months with consistent meetings and phone calls, sometimes even daily … often meeting both with the president and separately," according to the source.

-ABC News' Cindy Smith