US resumes operations at embassy in Caracas

The State Department announced Monday it is resuming operations at its embassy in Caracas, a key milestone in reestablishing diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Venezuela.

“Today, we are formally resuming operations at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, marking a new chapter in our diplomatic presence in Venezuela,” the State Department said in a statement.

The U.S. moved to normalize relations with Venezuela following the American military operation in January capturing Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and transporting him to New York to face drug charges. 

Laura Dogu, a two-time ambassador to Nicaragua and Honduras, was dispatched to Caracas in January as charge d’affaires of the U.S. mission. She has been working with a team to restore the chancery building at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas to prepare for the full return of personnel and resumption of consular services. 

Maduro cut off diplomatic ties with the U.S. in 2019, after President Trump — in his first term — recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the country’s legitimate interim president. Since then, the U.S. ran an interim diplomatic office at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia, called the Venezuela Affairs Unit (VAU).

Following Maduro’s capture, his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, was sworn in as interim president and has acceded to U.S. demands to cede control of its oil facilities and officially reestablished diplomatic ties earlier this month. 

The Trump administration says it has a three-phase plan leading to a democratic transition in Venezuela, where the political opposition claimed victory against Maduro in the 2024 presidential elections. The first and second phase are stabilization and recovery, which U.S. officials say is being carried out with the profits from Venezuelan oil sales. 

The Trump administration has not given a timeline on when it would move to the third phase, a political transition through elections, and Trump has reportedly discouraged leading opposition figure María Corina Machado from returning to Venezuela in the near term. 

Machado secretly left Venezuela in December to travel to Norway and accept the Nobel Peace Prize. She then traveled to Washington, D.C., and presented her award to Trump. She had been in hiding for a year inside Venezuela. 

David Smolansky, a senior adviser with Machado’s office in Washington, D.C., said Machado “is a woman of her word and she said she will go back to Venezuela,” in an interview with The Hill earlier this month. 

“We are exploring the best timing and also we are caring about her safety. She’ll be in Venezuela, she will embrace millions of Venezuelans again.”

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