At 4 a.m. on Saturday, Montgomery County Council President Natali Fani-González got an unexpected call from her brother in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela.

“He said, ‘Natali, we’re being attacked. There are explosions happening. I can see them from my house,’” Fani-González said. “I didn’t know what was happening and I didn’t know what to do.”

He was hearing, as the world would soon find out, the sound of the American military operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

President Donald Trump announced Saturday morning that U.S. forces were flying Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to the U.S. to face charges of narco-terrorism. Maryland’s congressional leaders have split along party lines in response to the mission.

Fani-González, who was born in Venezuela and immigrated to the U.S. when she was a teenager, said she’s no fan of Maduro and called him “a horrible person.”

“We’re glad that he’s not there anymore, but that doesn’t mean that we are happy either,” said Fani-González, a dual citizen. “There’s this uncertainty happening in the nation.”

She also said the Trump administration mishandled the ouster, particularly by failing to wait for Congress to approve the military action. She said she “cannot celebrate” a situation in which civilians were killed, and she feels the actions set a “dangerous precedent.”

Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, has said the U.S. operation killed Venezuelan civilians and military members. A senior Venezuelan government spokesperson put the death toll at 80. Trump has said no American military members died.

Fani-González expressed gratitude for her life in the U.S., a haven compared to the violence and political upheaval in Venezuela her family fled. But she said that removing Maduro doesn’t fix the country’s underlying problems.

“The structure, the corruption is still there, and that’s the biggest concern,” she said.

She sees some potential in the situation. She said she hopes the Venezuelan embassy in the U.S., now closed, can be reopened so that Venezuelan citizens in the U.S. can vote in future fair elections for her native country.

The results of the 2024 election that returned Maduro to power are disputed. The U.S. at the time expressed “serious concerns” about the validity of the results.

But she’s not optimistic for Venezuela.

Fani-González’s brothers in Caracas told her that people in their neighborhood are hunkering down to prepare for potential unrest. Lines at the supermarket have been long as people stock up to prepare for the unknown.

She said she believes that even Venezuelans who are pleased to see Maduro ousted are anxious because they don’t trust the U.S. to handle the aftermath.

“There’s been many instances when the United States has invaded Latin America, because they have treated Latin America as its backyard, not as a partner,” Fani-González said. “The trust is not there.”