Veneuzela on Tuesday deported a celebrated US television anchor from the country, after his interview with President Nicolas Maduro turned sour and he was briefly detained for asking unpalatable questions.

"We're leaving, expelled from Venezuela, for asking questions - simply for that," said Jorge Ramos, the high-profile anchor for Miami-based Latino network Univision.

"Our cameras and video memory cards have been stolen by the government. But we're going to keep asking questions," he added, walking through Caracas airport.

Ramos was detained beneath Miraflores presidential palace late on Monday night, after a televised interview with Mr Maduro took a turn for the worse.

Ramos, a household name in Latin America, was 17 minutes into the interview when he showed Mr Maduro footage of young Venezuelan men in Caracas following a bin lorry, rifling through the rubbish as it was thrown into the back and eating the filthy scraps of food they found.

“He didn’t like the things we were asking him about the lack of democracy in Venezuela, the torture and the political prisoners,” said Ramos.