Washington D.C. – CSIS, June 04, 2025
For over a decade, more governments have been detaining Americans for illegitimate reasons. These governments imprison U.S. nationals not because they have done anything wrong, but because they hold a U.S. passport—and the detaining governments want something from the United States in exchange for these Americans’ freedom. While the United States starts from a position of strength in addressing this issue, those holding U.S. citizens for leverage or advantage have sharpened their tool kit. The U.S. government must, in turn, sharpen its own.
Existing Tools
While hostage taking is an ancient phenomenon, the U.S. government’s institutional response is relatively recent. When the U.S. government established most of its “hostage enterprise” in the mid-2010s, it was responding to the seizure of Americans by terrorist groups. Presidential Policy Directive 30 (PPD-30), issued in 2015, created a set of institutions intended to help win the freedom of Americans held hostage by groups or states. Five years later, the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act (22 U.S.C. 1741 et. seq.)—commonly known as “the Levinson Act”—codified many of PPD-30’s provisions and gave the U.S. government additional tools to resolve cases and sanction those responsible.
For the Department of State, one of its most important tools is the process of “determination” that a U.S. citizen or permanent resident is a “wrongful” detainee. The Levinson Act enumerates 11 criteria for the secretary of state to use in making such a determination, and it provides for such cases to be transferred from the purview of the Bureau of Consular Affairs to the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs (SPEHA) within the Department of State—a position the act codified into law.
The SPEHA office has given the issue of wrongful imprisonment a central address within the U.S. government. Successful envoys have established useful precedents: They have prioritized family outreach and helped families navigate both the U.S. government and foreign counterparts. They have also maintained the office’s nonpartisan stance and demonstrated a willingness to engage with odious parties. The SPEHA office—and its central role in the hostage enterprise—is important to preserve.
There is more the U.S. government can do using the tools it possesses. For example, using existing authorities, it should allocate more resources toward prosecuting the intelligence activities of foreign nationals from countries that wrongfully detain Americans. When such individuals are found surveilling U.S. government installations or otherwise gathering intelligence, U.S. law enforcement should treat these as serious national security incidents that may provide lawful leverage to secure the release of detained Americans.
