WASHINGTON — President Trump signed an executive order on Friday that would let the U.S. designate nations as state sponsors of wrongful detention, using the threat of associated sanctions to deter Americans from being detained abroad or taken hostage.
The designation, similar to the state sponsors of terrorism label that the U.S. already imposes on some nations, will allow the State Department to target countries with penalties such as economic restrictions, restrictions on visas and travel restrictions for Americans to those countries.
“Like the State Sponsor of Terrorism determination, no nation should want to end up on this list,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
It’s aimed at making it easier to impose penalties on nations that block or restrain Americans, and impose a major penalty on countries that don’t release those U.S. nationals.
“With this EO you are signing today, you are drawing a line in the sand that U.S. citizens will not be used bargaining chips,” Sebastian Gorka, senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, told Trump as he signed the order at the White House.
The designation is designed for Rubio to be able to lift the penalties if a nation changes its practices.
It wasn’t immediately clear when the U.S. might begin applying the new label and to which countries, but two senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the order being signed cited China, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia as nations that could potentially face penalties.
The order also allows the designation to be applied to groups that control territory even if they are not recognized governments.
Global Reach, a nonprofit organization that has advocated for the return of wrongfully detained Americans, praised the executive order.
“This designation is something that will put real teeth behind the U.S. government’s efforts to bring home detained Americans and deter offending nations from engaging in ‘hostage diplomacy.’ The Trump administration is taking action and that is showing results. The previous administration returned around 75 people in four years. The Trump administration is only 228 days into their four-year term and has already brought home 72,” said Global Reach Chief Executive Mickey Bergman.
Trump has made bringing home Americans jailed abroad a focus in his second term.
“We’ve gotten a lot of people out and we’ll continue,” Trump said Friday.
In July, his government organized a three-nation swap, securing the release of 10 jailed U.S. citizens and permanent residents from Venezuela in exchange for getting home migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador.
Seven other Americans determined to be wrongfully detained in Venezuela were returned this year.
A Russian American woman who was convicted on treason charges for making a $52 donation to a charity aiding Ukraine was freed by Moscow in April as part of a prisoner swap. A similar swap in February freed an American teacher detained in Russia on drug charges.
Price writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.