LISA DESJARDINS: In Washington, divisions are deepening over President Trump's actions in Venezuela.

On Fox News Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the move necessary.

KRISTI NOEM, Homeland Security Secretary: We have been building a case against Maduro for years.

Homeland Security investigations, along with the FBI and the CIA have been tracking his drug trafficking, his crimes against humanity right here in the United States.

And to see him brought to justice is incredibly satisfying.

LISA DESJARDINS: But Senate Minority Leader Democrat Chuck Schumer said the goal does not justify the means.

CHUCK SCHUMER, Senate Minority Leader: Maduro's a horrible, horrible person but you don't treat lawlessness with other lawlessness.

When America tries to do regime change and nation building in this way, the American people pay the price in both blood and in dollars.

LISA DESJARDINS: For more understanding, we turn to Silvia Pedraza from the University of Michigan, who has studied Venezuela and its vast diaspora.

Silvia, you've been watching Spanish language news, including from Venezuela, how's the Latin American world viewing this?

SILVIA PEDRAZA, University of Michigan Professor: Well, I think that any authoritarian regime, whether of the left or the right, creates a lot of opposition.

And some of that opposition leaves the country.

There is a massive exodus that takes place.

Some of it ends up in prisons if they are politically active, and some of it just tries to remain focused on their family, their own lives and to keep it at the margins.

So I think that most Venezuelans are actually very happy with this outcome.

They did their best by holding very fair, true democratic elections in July 2024 and that got them nowhere because Maduro did not acknowledge the results of the elections and he pretended that they were false, though the democratic opposition had a lot of data showing that they were true.

This is the only possible outcome, really.

It's not one that I think that most people would have preferred.

But I think Venezuelans are very happy because they realized that they had done everything that they could, and that this was the only solution left.

LISA DESJARDINS: President Trump is focused on now Interim President Delcy Rodriguez.

The Supreme Court essentially put her in that position.

Yesterday he praised her, today he threatened her.

He has ignored pointedly, the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado.

How wide is her support do you think?

And what do you see if Trump tries to freeze her movement out altogether?

SILVIA PEDRAZA: Well, I think that's not possible.

I think that Trump has to work with Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez, the elected president at the parliamentary elections.

I think he needs to work with them and also with the exile.

There is a significant exile from Venezuela.

Eight million people have left, 4 million are in Colombia, over a million and a half are in the United States, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, lots of countries in the region have Venezuelans.

And some of them will want to return and to be part of the process of reconstruction.

So there needs to form a sort of a roundtable, using the Polish analogy, in which you have Trump and the United States and its interest.

Corina Machado and the president elected and also representatives of the exile community, and all three of them together need to reconstruct the country and to restart it, and not just the United States.

LISA DESJARDINS: You know, as we just heard, there are mixed views of the United States right now.

Some of those surround widespread spread concern.

In the view of one person who texted me that the United States is there to just plunder the oil reserves there.

Others say, no, China has had too much influence, that Venezuela has been the puppet of China and the US has to intervene.

Can you help us with that debate right now over the US as well -- SILVIA PEDRAZA: Well, that's very big.

But I think that, you know, the available data to me, I sat and watched President Trump's speech.

In the beginning, he talked about the reasons behind the US intervention being related to the narco traffic and the drug trade that came from Venezuela to the United States.

He spent some time of that.

Then he very briefly mentioned democracy.

It was remarkably brief.

And then, he spent a lot of time talking about the oil reserves that had been part of the United States and the need for the United States to now update them and refurbish them because they were in such sorry shape, and that this would benefit not just the United States, but the Venezuelan people.

So I think that he himself has told everybody that for him, the most important issue was the oil issue.

However, for the Venezuelan people who are on the streets, clearly for them, the major issue is democracy.

LISA DESJARDINS: I want to play some sound from Secretary of State Marco Rubio today.

He's addressing concerns that the US is in over its head here, that the US Is taking on too much risk.

Here's what he said.

MARCO RUBIO: The whole, you know, foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan.

This is not the Middle East.

And our mission here is very different.

This is the Western Hemisphere.

LISA DESJARDINS: The US has quite a history in Latin America.

There are real concerns about risks to the United States intervention here.

How do you see those risks in our last 30 seconds or so?

SILVIA PEDRAZA: I think that there is a risk to returning to the Monroe Doctrine of America from, for the Americans, meaning for the United States and not for the whole Western Hemisphere, which is what it should be.

And I go back to my point that I want to emphasize that what needs to happen for a process of reconstruction in Venezuela is for a roundtable of the United States, the exile community, and the democratically elected organized community in Venezuela to come together and together work out a program of reconstruction.

LISA DESJARDINS: Silvia Pedraza, we thank you for your thoughts.

SILVIA PEDRAZA: Thank you.

Thank you for inviting me in.