Families sue Maduro in Brooklyn over deadly police crackdown

Five Venezuelan families whose relatives were killed in a police campaign asked a Brooklyn federal court to hold Nicolás Maduro responsible for the deaths. Filed June 30, 2026, the civil suit puts a former head of state before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, where the families are seeking accountability outside Venezuela’s courts.

The complaint accuses Maduro of authorizing killings tied to the crackdown, pushing a private lawsuit into the center of a transnational fight over state violence. Brooklyn became the venue because the case was brought in federal court there, giving the families a U.S. forum to press claims that have not been resolved at home. The filing adds civil liability to a broader campaign of legal pressure on Maduro, whose rule has already been challenged in New York criminal proceedings.

The backdrop is a wider record of abuse documented after Venezuela’s July 28, 2024 presidential election. Human Rights Watch said in an April 30, 2025 report that Venezuelan authorities and pro-government armed groups committed widespread abuses, including killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment. The 104-page report said its findings were built on interviews with 101 people, along with analysis of 76 videos and 17 photographs.

That evidence has sharpened scrutiny of how far responsibility can reach beyond Venezuela. In the separate New York criminal case, Maduro’s defense has argued that he is entitled to head-of-state immunity. The United States has said it does not recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader since 2019, a position that complicates his claim to the protections typically extended to sitting heads of state.

The Brooklyn suit now asks whether civil litigation can do what criminal prosecution and domestic justice systems have not. Legal observers have said the case could test long-standing doctrines, including head-of-state immunity and extraterritorial arrest, while families seek a remedy for killings they say were carried out under state authority.