About

Urgente – Cayo Maduro – Capturado!, also known as Nicolás Maduro Being Arrested Redraws, is an AI-generated image of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro being escorted by two DEA agents following his capture by the U.S. in early January 2026 that was shown on a YouTube livestream of Bowery Newsroom.

The image and underlying caption have received several fan edits by Latin American groups on Facebook and Twitter / X as it spread further online and became a redraw meme format in the days following the event. Meme creators typically redraw the original by swapping out Maduro and the two men escorting him for various pop culture characters.

Origin

The image was originally AI-generated by Instagram user ultravfx^[1] and posted on January 3rd, 2026. The image was later shown that same day during a livestream by Bowery Newsroom^[2] on YouTube with the caption "Urgente – Cayo Maduro – Capturado!" The stream received over 2.7 million views, 38,000 likes and 330 comments in two days.

Some of the earliest edits of the AI photo with the Spanish-language news chyron caption were posted to the Facebook group Curi Toons on January 3rd, 2026.

On the same day, Facebook user Esteban MO^[3] posted an early edit and meme that replaced Maduro with the character Gol D. Roger and the DEA agents with marines from One Piece. The post received over 1,800 reactions in one day.

Spread

The meme of Nicolás Maduro being escorted by two people continued to spread over the following hours and days as numerous redraws of the AI-generated scene continued to spread on social media in early January 2026.

For example, on January 3rd, 2026, X / Twitter^[4] user Bheros1Bheros posted a variant featuring characters from Umamusume in place of Maduro and the DEA agents, receiving over 55,200 views, 6,200 likes and 770 retweets in two days.

That same day, the Facebook^[5] page El Tío Ganondorf posted a version with Ganondorf from The Legend of Zelda being arrested, garnering over 2,700 likes, 740 shares and 50 comments in a similar timeframe.

On January 4th, 2026, Redditor Dry-Application6661 uploaded a variant of the redraw featuring Dr. Wallace Breen and characters from the Half-Life video game series to the /r/HalfLife^[6] subreddit, receiving over 1,100 upvotes and 30 comments in a day.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References