U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday that creates a designation for state sponsors of wrongful detention of Americans.
A senior U.S. official told reporters that the public can appreciate the measure’s consequential nature by watching videos of Israeli-American Eden Alexander’s White House-brokered release from Hamas captivity earlier this year and Ksenia Karelina’s arrival on American soil after Washington intervened to secure her release from Russia.
“Listen to the voices of the American citizens, who were liberated as hostages and wrongfully detained, and that will give you the significance of the action the president is taking this afternoon,” the official said.
Senior Trump administration officials told reporters that designating states that support detaining Americans wrongfully is based on sanctions of state terror sponsors but has a different scope and purpose. The new designation aims to turn such detentions from a potential asset to a liability, they said.
Under the new order, Washington could bar officials and nationals from the offending country from entering the United States.
The U.S. government interprets the designation “wrongful detention” based on the degree to which the country’s judicial system is impartial, evidence presented against the alleged offender and whether the detention appears to be used as leverage to extract concessions from Washington, the senior officials said.
If offending countries don’t release wrongfully detained Americans prior to penalties being imposed, the new order could also limit U.S. passport holders from traveling to those states.
“We are drawing a very clear delineation today—a line in the sand,” a Trump administration official told reporters. “You will not use Americans as bargaining chips, and there will be severe consequences for anyone who thinks that that which was done under the Biden regime can continue under the second Trump administration.”
The order applies to entities that control significant territory, even if they aren’t recognized governments.
“Everything changes with regards to rogue regimes and regimes, who think Americans can be treated as pawns,” the senior official said.
JNS asked how the executive order might apply to terror groups like Hamas, which still holds the bodies of two murdered Americans, and Iraq, where the Iran-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah group holds Russian-Israel Elizabeth Tsurkov.
Washington is treating the latter as a U.S. hostage, because she is a doctoral candidate at Princeton University and her family has ties to the United States.
A senior Trump administration official said that if Washington thinks that a country is “aiding and abetting in any way,” or hosting an individual involved in wrongful detention, “we can deal with the country to have them thrown out and eliminated, or we could impose crippling sanctions.”
The U.S. official said that “one could hold Iraq responsible” for Kata’ib Hezbollah.
“That would be an example where it’s not their country, but it is their job in running a country to have control of their country,” the U.S. official said.
The senior U.S. official did not respond to the JNS question about whom, if anyone, Washington would hold accountable for Hamas’s actions beyond the terror group.
One of the senior U.S. officials said that the 72 wrongfully detained Americans, who have been freed this year, are “a reaffirmation of what ‘America first’ means, the number one priority the president has for the wrongfully detained and for hostages and also a stress and emphasis on American sovereignty.”
The U.S. government does not disclose publicly the number of Americans wrongfully detained abroad. The Foley Foundation, an advocacy group for the detained, said in its latest report that at least 54 Americans were hostages or wrongfully detained in 17 countries last year.
The Trump administration has negotiated several releases this year, including from Gaza, Russia and Afghanistan.
The executive order gives power to the U.S. secretary of state to designate any foreign country as a state sponsor of wrongful detention based on its involvement in or support for detaining U.S. nationals wrongfully.
“For those countries, for those state actors, that hold Americans, there’s going to be a massive cost to them, and we are going to cripple their economic systems,” one of the senior Trump administration officials said.
“For those that are thinking about taking Americans or have made that mistake, the easiest way to get out of the executive order is to send our men and women back,” the official said.
The order directs the secretary of state to take “appropriate action” with respect to designated countries, which include the options of sanctions and inadmissibility of nationals from those countries, as well as export controls and other measures existing under current law.
The designation can be terminated if the secretary of state determines that the offending foreign government changed its behavior and has demonstrated that its policies no longer involve wrongful detention.
Asked how quickly the executive order might be put to use, one of the officials said that “if you haven’t been in a cave for the last eight months, you realize that we have a commander-in-chief that is predisposed to action.”
“We don’t create tools not to use them,” the senior U.S. official said. “That’s what you should expect.”
A third senior Trump administration official said that the executive order will target countries that “persistently participate in hostage diplomacy,” taking hostages for diplomatic purposes. The official cited Iran, China and Afghanistan as examples.
The Syrian government “has been extremely helpful” in the Trump administration’s search for Austin Tice, an American journalist who was kidnapped while reporting in Syria in 2012 and whose status is unknown, the official said.
“We’re going to continue to work with them to try to bring closure on that,” the official said.
