US President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Friday establishing a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” designation to penalize countries that wrongfully imprison Americans.
The new designation is intended to deter countries from illegally detaining US citizens and to encourage them to release wrongfully detained individuals. The secretary of state will be responsible for determining which countries will receive the designation.
“Through this Executive Order, actors designated as State Sponsors of Wrongful Detention may face severe penalties including economic sanctions, visa restrictions, foreign assistance restrictions, and travel restrictions for U.S. passport holders,” the State Department’s Marco Rubio said in a statement Friday evening.
“The bottom line: Anyone who uses an American as a bargaining chip will pay the price,” he told reporters.
The administration has not announced which countries may be designated as state sponsors of wrongful detention. Venezuela, Russia, Iran, China, and Afghanistan all have a history of illegally detaining Americans.
Currently, US citizens have been wrongfully detained or held hostage in Russia and Afghanistan, and Americans are still imprisoned in China and Iran.
According to a senior administration official, there may be “travel restrictions for US passport holders.” Currently, the US does not allow Americans to travel to North Korea on US passports unless there is an approved exception, in which case the State Department issues a “special validation passport.”
According to the official, countries will be notified that they are at risk of being designated, “and they will have a certain pool of time to fix it.”
The new designation applies to both foreign governments and “entities controlling significant territory, even if they are not currently recognized governments,” according to another senior administration official. This would allow it to be used in areas such as Afghanistan, where at least one American, Mahmood Habibi, is still detained. The United States does not recognize the Taliban as an official government.
This senior administration official stated that the executive order gives the administration access to the “toolbox” of punitive measures used against countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism.
“It’s a wider aperture against which we can use those tools. You don’t have to fund Hamas, Hezbollah, or al-Qaeda; you can simply try to exploit our citizens illegally,” the official said.
Advocates working against wrongful detention and hostage-taking welcomed the move.
The James W. Foley Legacy Foundation described the new executive order as “a critical step forward in confronting a deeply entrenched practice that violates international norms and endangers innocent lives.”
“We urge all governments wrongfully detaining American citizens to take this moment—before the first designations under this executive order are issued—to immediately and unconditionally release all American captives,” said the organization, which is named after Foley, who was killed in ISIS captivity.
The family of Robert Levinson thanked the administration for the new executive order. Levinson, a former FBI agent, was abducted in Iran in 2007 and has never been seen or heard from again. His family stated in 2020 that they believed he died in Iranian custody. Tehran has denied having detained him.
“Every government guilty of this barbaric conduct must understand that they will be held accountable and will pay a price backed by the full force of the United States government,” according to a statement.
Global Reach, a non-profit that works to bring home Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad, said the new designation “will put real teeth behind the US government’s efforts to bring back detained Americans and deter offending nations from engaging in ‘hostage diplomacy.'”
Paul Whelan, a former wrongful detainee held in Russia for nearly six years, said the new designation is a “good start,” but he also urged the US government to “ensure that once home, hostages are taken care of properly.”
In 2022, former President Joe Biden issued an executive order declaring hostage-taking and wrongful detention of Americans as a national emergency. The Biden administration also added the “D” indicator to State Department travel advisories for specific countries to indicate that a US citizen is at risk of being kidnapped or wrongfully detained if they travel there.
