Dozens of Americans are wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad, often for years

After hitting a peak in 2022, the number of U.S. nationals who are being held hostage or wrongfully detained by foreign nations or non-state actors has fallen 42%, according to a new report out Wednesday by the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation.

The report, shared first with NPR, finds there are 46 U.S. nationals currently held hostage or wrongfully detained across 16 nations. They include Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was sentenced last week to 16 years in a Russian prison colony on charges of espionage, and Alsu Kurmasheva, the Russian-American journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sentenced to 6 1/2 years for allegedly spreading false rumors about the Russian army. Both have rejected the charges against them — as has the U.S. government.

The majority of cases highlighted in the report, 78%, involved a wrongful detention by state actors like China, Iran or Russia. The rest involved hostage cases by non-state actors including Hamas, which is currently holding at least five American citizens that it took captive during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The average length of captivity across all 46 cases is more than five years, according to the report. In at least six instances, captivity has lasted for more than 11 years.

"We need Americans to be more aware — not afraid to go abroad because we need Americans out in the world. But we must be more aware of what countries are actually targeting, directly targeting U.S. nationals," said Diane Foley, who established the Foley Foundation after her son, the journalist James Foley, was kidnapped in Syria in 2012 and later killed by ISIS.

The report credits a surge in diplomatic activity by the Biden administration for the safe return of 55 American captives since 2022, when the overall number of hostage and wrongful detention cases reached as high as 79.

Several of those returns were brought about by high-profile prisoner swaps, such as the 2022 agreement that led Moscow to release the WNBA star Brittney Griner in exchange for the convicted Russian arms trader Viktor Bout. That same year, seven Americans who had been held captive in Venezuela were also freed after the U.S. agreed to grant clemency to two nephews of the country’s first lady who had been in prison on drug smuggling charges.

While family members have welcomed these deals, many critics have said they only serve to incentivize rogue regimes into taking more Americans captive.

Despite many of the gains laid out in the report, Americans continue to face risks. Since 2023, 13 U.S. nationals have been taken hostage by groups like Hamas and the Taliban, and 10 others have been detained by Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Venezuela.

Russia in particular, the report notes, “has shown an increasing pattern of wrongfully detaining and holding U.S. nationals.” It says that since 2022, an average of nine Americans have been unjustly detained in Russia each year, up from an average of three per year between 2007 and 2021.

In China, meanwhile, “U.S. nationals continue to endure lengthy detentions in Chinese prisons, averaging 12.5 years, with individual detentions spanning approximately eight to 18 years.”

The report also outlines challenges that families of captive Americans say they have faced in navigating the diplomatic process relied on to win a loved one’s release. One frustration is “the opaque process that culminates in a decision by the Secretary of State to declare a U.S. national wrongfully detained.”

The designation is more than just a semantic one, according to Benjamin Gray, vice president of the Foley Foundation. That’s because once someone is designated as wrongfully detained, their family has access to travel funds to allow them to visit Washington, D.C., to advocate on behalf of their loved ones, as well as mental health and medical services. Upon their return, wrongful detainees also have access to those services.

The designation, Gray said, helps families “endure the horror of captivity.”

The Foley Foundation says that of the 10 U.S. nationals that it says has been wrongfully detained since 2023, only five have been officially designated as such by the U.S. government.

"The families of U.S. nationals wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad face incredible hardships as they tirelessly advocate for their loved ones who have been taken from them," a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.

The department "continuously reviews the circumstances surrounding the detentions of U.S. nationals overseas for indicators that they may be wrongful," the statement continued. "When making assessments, the Department conducts a fact-based review that looks at the totality of the circumstances for each case individually. For reasons of privacy and operational security, we do not always publicly disclose wrongful detention determinations."