Two members of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's family will appear before a U.S. federal judge on Thursday on charges that they conspired to smuggle drugs into the United States, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas were arrested during a sting operation in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, by local police and handed over to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents on Tuesday.

A grand jury indictment released by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York accused the men of conspiring to manufacture and ship cocaine into the United States via Honduras.

Sources told the Journal that the men met with a DEA informant last month seeking to transport 800 kilograms of the drug through Roatán, a Honduran island in the Caribbean.

An ex-DEA official told The Associated Press that, during the arrest, the men had Venezuelan diplomatic passports and identified themselves as the son and nephew of Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores. Other sources say the men are both nephews of the first lady.

The arrests are likely to exacerbate already tense relations between the U.S. and Venezuela and cast a hard look at U.S. accusations of drug trafficking at the highest levels of Maduro's socialist administration.

During a speech at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday, Maduro did not address the arrests but spoke in broad terms about imperialism and lashed out at a U.S. general. He also defended his country's independence and said it would not accept interference from outside.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Read the indictment: