American policy is “100% focused on returning people home,” Adam Boehler, the U.S. presidential envoy for hostage affairs, said during a U.S. hostage and wrongful detainee flag-raising ceremony at the U.S. State Department on Thursday.
“This president has no qualms about using action when it’s necessary, and we will all back him up in that,” Boehler said. “So it’s starting a new era—I do believe it is new—where we’re saying that it is not acceptable in any case to hold American citizens abroad wrongfully.”
“The president will continue to push until all of our Americans, dead or alive, are returned,” he added.
Kash Patel, the FBI director, said at the ceremony that “we are fighting multiple wars overseas, especially in relation to Oct. 7 and those wrongfully detained there.”
“We still don’t have everybody back,” he said. “Whatever lawful authorities we have at the FBI, we are going to give 24/7, 365 days to make sure that we zero out this number and to make sure we prevent others from going into situations that you are now all too familiar with.”
