OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
1:20 PM – Saturday, March 14, 2026
The United States Embassy in Caracas has raised the American flag for the first time in exactly 7 years after the Trump administration captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and former First Lady Cilia Flores, who await trial for narco-terrorism in New York.
“On the morning of March 14, 2019, the American flag was lowered for the last time at the United States Embassy in Caracas,” U.S. Chargé d’Affaires to Venezuela Laura F. Dogu on the embassy’s X on Saturday morning. “This morning, March 14, 2026, at the same hour, my team and I raised the United States flag—exactly seven years after it was removed.”
“A new era has begun for relations between the United States and Venezuela,” she declared. “We’re staying with Venezuela.”
The post attached a picture of Dogu with U.S. service members who saluted as she raised the stars and stripes.
In another post she added, “Onward with Venezuela.”
The U.S. pulled all remaining personnel from its embassy in Venezuela in 2019 due to a “deteriorating situation,” according to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, amid political unrest. Maduro had cut off diplomatic relations with the U.S. after President Donald Trump officially recognized his opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as Venezuela’s interim president and rejected Maduro’s legitimacy.
Years later, Trump’s administration launched Operation Absolute Resolve, striking Caracas overnight in early January and successfully extracting the country’s socialist dictator with no American lives lost.
Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, has since filled in as the country’s interim president and agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations with the U.S.
Last week, the Department of State (DOS) stated that the agreement with the interim government will “promote stability, support economic recovery, and advance political reconciliation in Venezuela.”
“Our engagement is focused on helping the Venezuelan people move forward through a phased process that creates the conditions for a peaceful transition to a democratically elected government,” the department said in a media note. “The United States remains committed to supporting the Venezuelan people and working with partners across the region to advance stability and prosperity.”
Trump asserted that Rodríguez was a leader who would “make Venezuela great again,” in a callback to his famous campaign slogan.
Though he had originally warned of a second wave of strikes on the capital city, he called it off when Rodríguez’s team cooperated with the U.S. Trump said that she was “doing a great job, and working with U.S. Representatives very well,” a comment that the interim leader thanked him for.
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