Community organizations gather for ‘Hands Off Venezuela’ rally in downtown Los Angeles

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES () — Participants gathered in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday for a rally to condemn the United States’ invasion and takeover of Venezuela.

Overnight, the U.S. took the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, from power and removed him from the country. He’s now in U.S. custody in New York.

President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will run Venezuela, at least temporarily, and tap its vast oil reserves.

Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges. The Justice Department has now released a new indictment against Maduro and his wife, painting the regime as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug trafficking operation that flooded the U.S. with cocaine.

Meanwhile, Unión del Barrio, the Community Self-Defense Coalition and other local organizations hosted a rally to condemn Trump’s invasion and takeover.

The Hands Off Venezuela rally was one of many under the same name across the country on Saturday.

At the top of the list of their demands was that the U.S. free Nicolás Maduro.

They called Trump’s threat of the U.S. controlling Venezuela a “psychological war.”

The groups also made it known they support the Bolivarian Revolution, the socialist-leaning movement started by Hugo Chavez in 1999, and carried on by Maduro.

RELATED: A timeline of the US military’s buildup and strikes against Venezuela leading to Maduro’s capture