Washington D.C. – WDET, December 17, 2024
Michigan Congresswoman Haley Stevens says the newly approved National Defense Authorization Act should help both detainees like Paul Whelan and their families.
The U.S. House approved the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, with provisions designed to help Americans wrongfully detained by other countries. That includes Michigan native Paul Whelan, who was held by Russia for more than five years before his release this summer in a massive prisoner exchange.
Michigan Congresswoman Haley Stevens co-chairs a House task force on hostages and wrongful detainees. She says the new defense act should help both detainees like Whelan and their families.
Rep. Haley Stevens: While we’re delighted to see Paul Whelan return home, we also have ongoing wrongful detainee situations and hostage situations all across the world. One that’s really visceral is the ongoing hostage taking in the Middle East, in Gaza. And what we want to do is make it harder for adversaries of this country to take Americans. We want to put our full weight into deterrence. We want to make sure that we have a sound strategy. We want to make sure we have the resources. And I am absolutely thrilled that after a lot of work, we got into the defense bill several key provisions around deterrence, around passport applications, to cut through some of the steps. If you are taken, God forbid, you will immediately have resources if you choose to select that on your passport application.
And we also are saying that we mean business. So one of the key things that we did is improve already existing legislation, the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act. No later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this legislation, relevant agencies will be coordinated from the White House through multiple government agencies when a citizen is detained. Because one of the things that we found is, no surprise with a big federal government, the left hand is not talking to the right hand a lot of times. So we’re opening up communication strategies. That is absolutely critical for what we call emergency hostage or wrongful detention situations.
