On Sept. 5, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a new executive order: “Strengthening Efforts to Protect U.S. Nationals from Wrongful Detention Abroad.” The executive order, which creates the “state sponsor of wrongful detention” designation, is designed to punish foreign governments for their hostage-taking behavior.
The executive order addresses a very real problem – and one that lacks obvious solutions. What is wrongful detention, and what will the U.S. executive order do?
“Hostage diplomacy” is typically about bigger issues
Over the last decade, a handful of autocratic governments have engaged in what scholars call hostage diplomacy. This is when governments use their criminal justice systems to detain a foreigner, seeking broader leverage with that person’s government. In this emerging form of state-led hostage taking, government agents detain foreigners and charge them with exaggerated – or entirely fabricated – crimes. The victim then proceeds through that country’s criminal justice system. But the actual purpose has little to do with punishing actual criminal behavior. Instead, it’s a way to coerce political or economic concessions in exchange for their release.
Over the last decade, the U.S. government has developed law and policy to deal with hostage diplomacy. The 2020 Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act outlines the process that the United States follows today. When the U.S. government determines that an American citizen is being held for leverage, the secretary of state declares that the American has been “wrongfully detained.” This official designation paves the way for the U.S. government’s hostage envoy to take up the case, negotiating for the detainee’s freedom.
Wrongful detention cases attract global attention
Trump – like presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama before him – has dealt with his fair share of wrongful detention cases. When Iran, Russia, and Venezuela took Americans hostage, recent presidents have made striking and substantial concessions – unfreezing assets and swapping dozens of prisoners – to bring Americans home. WNBA star player Brittney Griner spent 10 months in Russian detention, while U.S. officials quietly negotiated for her release in a prisoner swap.
Each time that the U.S. government negotiates a hostage deal, the joyous return is marred by partisan critique: Did the president make a bad deal? Was it worth the price? Why do Americans travel to dangerous places, anyway?
But there’s also an underlying concern that any hostage concessions today create incentives for more hostage taking in the future. Trump’s new executive order tries to break that chain.
What does the executive order do?
The new executive order establishes the “state sponsor of wrongful detention” designation. This is clearly modeled after the “state sponsor of terrorism” designation, whereby the U.S. State Department can label and penalize governments that have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” The terrorism designation carries specific penalties, including sanctions and trade restrictions on its four current designees: Syria (designated in 1979), Iran (1984), North Korea (2017), and Cuba (2021).
Similarly, the new executive order outlines a designation and punishment process. The secretary of state can designate a foreign government as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” for their hostage-taking behavior. Then, the State Department can impose a wide range of penalties on the foreign government. These might include enacting sanctions, visa restrictions, and export controls, as well as prohibiting foreign assistance. The State Department could also ban Americans from traveling to that country with their U.S. passport.
Deterrence research played a role in the new policy
The executive order is loosely based on policies recommended by an expert bipartisan commission. For the past two years, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) convened a commission to grapple with the threat of hostage diplomacy. I served as a member of the commission and helped shape its recommendations, bringing in insights about how political scientists think about deterrence.
A central premise of the commission’s report is that hostage taking is a rational act: Governments “wrongfully detain” foreigners because doing so is remarkably effective for the perpetrators’ goals. In detaining Americans and other westerners, state hostage takers coerce massive concessions – and do so without risking military retaliation. Over the past decade, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, in particular, have derived significant benefits. And they’ve rarely faced any costs.
To prevent future hostage taking, the commission urged the U.S. government to take deterrence and punishment seriously, through two tangible steps.
First, the commission recommended that Congress require the secretary of state to issue an annual report on hostage taking, modeled on the annual Trafficking in Persons report. This annual hostage report would rank countries’ hostage-taking behavior in a tiered system, highlighting the countries in which hostage taking is frequent, habitual, and/or severe.
Second, the CSIS commission recommended that the U.S. government impose “immediate and tangible” consequences for increased or exacerbated hostage taking. If a foreign government moves to a new tier, then the U.S. government will consider a range of concomitant penalties. These might involve international condemnation, sanctions, and visa restrictions, as well as granting exceptions to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, permitting lawsuits against foreign governments in U.S. courts.
Within these recommendations, the commission focused on two core aspects of effective deterrence. On the one hand, we stressed conditionality: The U.S. government should commit to removing penalties if the perpetrator releases their hostages. On the other hand, we prized clarity. By outlining the ranking system of an annual report, would-be hostage takers could see the penalties they might face if they decided to start taking captives.
Will this new approach work?
So, will the new executive order help deter hostage diplomacy? Four big questions remain.
Will the Trump administration target the worst perpetrators?
One immediate concern is whether the U.S. government might use the designation in support of other political agendas. In announcing the new policy, Trump administration officials have suggested that they would review China, Iran, and Afghanistan for the designation. Suspiciously absent from that list are Russia and Venezuela, arguably the most prolific perpetrators of hostage diplomacy in recent years.
There are real reasons to worry about leaving these designations to the administration without congressional oversight. During the first Trump administration, the State Department developed a new set of travel warnings for countries with kidnapping risk. Noticeably absent from the Trump administration’s initial list – despite their robust kidnapping threat – were El Salvador, Saudi Arabia, and the West Bank and Gaza.
The bipartisan CSIS commission was clear that Congress should be intimately involved in any hostage policy, partly to ensure that the administration accurately and appropriately identifies the correct offenders.
Will these new tools work against already isolated adversaries?
The premise of the executive order is that foreign governments would seek to avoid the punishments that accompany the “state sponsor of wrongful detention” designation. But such punishments will only change adversaries’ behavior if they impose a meaningful, painful departure from the status quo.
Accordingly, receiving this new U.S. designation could matter much more for some countries than others. It’s hard to imagine how new penalties could hurt Iran – arguably the worst offender. After all, the Iranian government is already subject to numerous U.S. sanctions and other penalties. But the designation could make a difference to Afghanistan – a recipient of significant foreign assistance. And the impact of this designation, particularly any limitations on international trade and travel, could have wide-ranging consequences for a country like China.
Will U.S. penalties for hostage taking deter – or fuel – further conflict?
In other words, does hostage diplomacy follow a spiral or a deterrence model? If hostage takers are status quo actors, then attempting to deter hostage taking through punishment should work: The threat or imposition of new costs would render hostage taking increasingly unappealing. However, if hostage takers are revisionist, then imposing new punishments could invite retaliation.
Does the Trump administration have authority to accuse others of “wrongful detention”?
The 2020 Levinson Act outlines the 11 criteria whereby the U.S. secretary of state may designate an individual American as “wrongfully detained” abroad. For example, the Levinson Act suggests that a detention is wrongful if an individual “is being detained in violation of the laws of the detaining country,” or if independent organizations and journalists “have raised legitimate questions” about the person’s innocence. In those circumstances, such detentions are indeed troubling and problematic when committed by an autocratic adversary of the United States.
But critics point out that the Levinson Act’s criteria could very well describe recent arbitrary and unconstitutional arrests carried out by the U.S. government against foreign citizens in the United States. For instance, someone arrested for exercising basic rights, like freedom of the press, religion, or assembly, has likely been wrongfully detained. Detentions are also wrongful if the “individual is being detained in inhumane conditions,” or when due process has been so impaired that the detention can only appear arbitrary.
And here’s the real dilemma. At a time when the U.S. government might be seeking international cooperation from like-minded partners to combat hostage diplomacy, it has abandoned the moral authority that accompanies the rule of law. Many governments around the world will likely see the Trump administration’s efforts to name, shame, and punish “wrongful detention” as deeply hypocritical.
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