Initially, Isabel and her friends didn’t realize the sounds they were hearing were bomb blasts. The Caracas-born graphic designer in her 20s remembered staying up late chatting and listening to music at a friend’s home when U.S. forces hit Venezuela’s capital in the early hours of Jan. 3—part of an effort to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Isabel first mistook the noises shaking her environment for thunder.
As she and her friends hurried to gather beer bottles around the room, one pointed out the window at a cloud of smoke rising from a nearby military base. Additional blasts jolted the house. Isabel ended up huddling with her friends until sunrise, fighting to breathe through two panic attacks. “I’ll never forget that noise,” she told TIME in a phone interview. The following morning, Isabel rushed home and has seldom gone out since. Like many others, her life has been marked by the deep anxiety that has settled over Venezuela after the U.S. raid.
When word of Maduro’s ouster first spread on social media early that Saturday morning, many banged pots and pans in celebration. Chants of hijo de puta—son of a bitch—echoed through Caracas’ streets. But the brief wave of celebration has dimmed as it’s become apparent that the regime backing Maduro . As Venezuelans have gradually left their homes to buy food, visit family, and return to work, many are leaving their phones behind, worried that armed government supporters called colectivos will search their devices.
Several Venezuelan residents told TIME that fear of what might be found on their phones at checkpoints has influenced their actions in the days after Maduro’s removal.
“You can end up in jail just for thinking differently from the government,” says C., a Caracas designer who agreed to talk to TIME only if referred to by her first initial. She says she’s deleted everything from her phone—photos, text messages, Instagram included. “There’s so much uncertainty,” she adds. “We’re afraid to speak, afraid to share opinions on social media. Most of all, we’re afraid nothing will change.”
Isabel and her friends share that anxiety, all having deleted photos, text threads, and apps. Isabel says she won’t go beyond her immediate neighborhood to avoid running into colectivos at checkpoints and having her phone searched. “Everyone’s living in fear now,” Isabel says. “I know what they can do.”
A meme circulating among some Venezuelans sums up the mixed feelings of this tense moment in the country. On a purple background, Spanish text compares the precautions many Venezuelans have taken since Maduro’s capture to the steps someone might take to cover their tracks if they were cheating on their spouse. “We’re like married people with lovers… reading and deleting everything so we don’t get caught,” the meme says, followed by three emojis that cry and laugh at the same time.
On Saturday, the State Department issued an advisory telling U.S. citizens in Venezuela to leave immediately, warning of reports that armed colectivos are searching cars at checkpoints for signs of U.S. citizenship or support for the U.S.
Camila, a Caracas medical professional, slept through the bomb blasts and the roar of American helicopters that removed Venezuela’s dictator. When she woke up around 10 a.m. that Saturday, she was shocked by the dozens of text messages from friends about the news. She didn’t leave her house until Wednesday, fearing her phone would be searched and she’d be taken to , a pyramid-shaped building in central Caracas originally designed as a mall but now infamously used by Venezuela’s intelligence agencies for interrogations and torture since the 1980s.
Camila heard a rumor that militia members are stopping people at gunpoint and making them plug their phones into a special device meant to detect anti-regime messages. Camila jokingly named the device Tronchatoro—or Trunchbull, after the cruel school headmistress in Roald Dahl’s Matilda. Camila says she’ll return to her office soon but will leave her regular phone at home. Instead, she bought a new $60 phone with a blank memory and new number.
Despite her fear of Tronchatoro, Camila says she feels “lighter” since Maduro’s capture—though still on edge. She’s dared to hope before that the repressive government, in power since the late 1990s, would change. There was hope for a new chapter after Hugo Chavez’s 2013 death, but then Maduro took over. The 2024 elections were won by the opposition, but Maduro refused to recognize the result. “You get punched in the face so many times, you’re scared to hope,” Camila says. “I have a little hope, but you can’t let yourself be fully hopeful—because it might just be another punch.”