When Paul Whelan returned to the United States last year after being wrongfully detained in a Russian prison for more than five years, he came home to nothing. 

“At 55, I’m starting over again, almost from zero,” Whelan told the Washington Examiner.

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He had lost his job and his house and was left realizing, “There’s nothing the federal government is prepared to do,” likening the hurdles he has faced to “a big black hole.”

During Whelan’s five years, seven months, and five days in Russian captivity, his plight became well known across the country. The U.S. government poured time and resources into securing his release. 

He and others wrongfully detained by the Russian government received a hero’s welcome when they stepped off the airplane and onto the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews exactly one year ago. It was a triumphant moment, years in the making, when he and journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva were welcomed home by then-President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris and were reunited with their families after their unlawful detentions.

And yet, Whelan feels like the government is ill-suited to help him process his trauma and overcome the seemingly impossible bureaucratic hurdles he’s encountered restarting his life.

He wants to help the government learn from his experiences so future Americans who return from being wrongfully imprisoned abroad don’t have to go through the same issues.

“It’s difficult, and I don’t want to see that happening to anyone else,” he said. “If you can get that point across, I’d appreciate it,” he said, adding that he wants to meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss the issue further.

Texas Treatment

Like many Americans who return from wrongful detention, the group that returned home one year ago was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center, a hospital on Joint Base San Antonio, for evaluation.

Going to the facility to get screened after being wrongfully detained is the first part of their post-isolation support activities (known as PISA), Lt. Col. Dr. John Kiley, a doctor at BAMC, told the Washington Examiner, though it’s just one component.

Whelan described little moments during those activities that felt triggering, given his experiences. He said he had his movements restricted while in the secure ward, which he likened to being back in prison, and he was later put in a hotel room for the first time since he was “violently arrested in a hotel room” in Moscow.

“The psychologists came to talk, and I’m laughing with them like, you know, the last time I was in a hotel room, I was dragged out kind of violently,” Whelan said. “This is kind of a PTSD moment, and they all looked at each other like, oh, yeah, we hadn’t thought about that.”

Comparatively, Kurmasheva, the U.S.-Russian dual citizen journalist who was returned in the swap as well, told the Washington Examiner she spent 10 days at the facility, which she said “helped a lot,” and that she “can’t complain” about the care.  

Kiley, the doctor at BAMC, explained: “We start fairly broad for everyone so that we make sure we don’t miss anything. So that’s things like whether or not they’ve sustained any trauma while they’ve been wrongfully detained, depending on where they’ve been wrongfully detained, we think a lot about potential exposures, exposures in the environment and how that may have impacted their health.”

After each case where BACM treats a wrongfully detained American who has returned, they do “a careful analysis of what we could do differently or what specific things were brought up by the latest mission that might help us improve care,” the doctor added.

Back Home

Whelan was quick to point out the generosity of his community. A dentist worked on his teeth pro bono, while other doctors have been “very willing to help with whatever they can,” he said.

The Detroit area car dealership association came together to provide him with a car, as well. 

Still, Whelan struggled to obtain a driver’s license because it expired during detention. His congresswoman, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), told the Washington Examiner that she had to contact Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s office and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office to cut through the red tape. 

“Even with people like me trying to cut through the bureaucracy, there were days you just wanted to scream,” said Dingell, who became close with Whelan’s parents while he was detained.

Whelan pointed out the irony that the car is a Ford Escape, and said his license plate pays homage to the five years, seven months, and five days he was detained. Strangers nationwide have donated to a GoFundMe page to help him restart his life.

In the year since her release, Kurmasheva said she’s spent a lot of time reflecting on where she had been a year earlier — in prison, unsure if she’d ever be reunited with her husband and two daughters.

“I was thinking almost every day that this day last year, I was doing this and that. This day last year, I was feeling this and that, and it’s not just me. My children would remind me, Mommy, that this day last year, we were sad and happy. We were thinking about you. We did this, and we thought about it, like I’ve lived this past year in that mode. Yes, being back with my family was so healing,” she said. “That’s like the biggest heal of my soul.”

Kurmasheva and Butorin, both of whom work for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, highlighted that Russian authorities are still detaining a handful of their colleagues for their coverage.

In May 2023, she traveled to Russia to visit her mother but was ultimately barred from leaving, facing charges related to her work. In July 2024, shortly before her release, Kurmasheva was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for spreading “false information” about the Russian army.

U.S. Government

Wrongful detention cases are under the purview of the office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, which operates within the State Department. The envoy position, which was formally established a decade ago, has the rank of ambassador and reports directly to the secretary of state.

Since then, the U.S. government has sought to establish the infrastructure within the federal government to support these cases, refine their processes, and build out and staff up the SPEHA office.

“When I came to the SPEHA position in 2020, we really didn’t have anything for returning wrongful detainees,” Amb. Roger Carstens, the previous Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, told the Washington Examiner. “There was no program for bringing these people back home and providing them with post-isolation support.”

The office uses criteria established in the 2020 Robertson Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act to determine if Americans meet the legal criteria to be considered “wrongfully detained,” and additional legislation has continued to refine the office.

“Every year we’re getting better, and every year we basically listen to detainees coming home and try to better what they’ve received based on after-action reviews and talking to them,” said Carstens, who served in the role from 2020 through early 2025.

Experts in the field, both in SPEHA and in advocacy groups, have coined the phrase “hostage diplomacy” to describe the occurrence in which nefarious state or non-state actors use trumped-up charges to target Americans with the objective of extracting concessions from the United States in exchange for securing their release.

Over the last couple of years, the U.S. government secured the release of Americans considered wrongfully detained from Russia, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Iran, Niger, Rwanda, China, and Belarus.

Jason Rezaian, an Iranian-American journalist for the Washington Post who was wrongfully detained by the Iranian regime for more than a year, from July 2014 to January 2016, told the Washington Examiner that there “hasn’t been a really streamlined process yet figuring out what are the various needs people have when they get back.”

“Think about it like this. You’ve been not only out of work and out of your home life, you’ve been out of society. You’ve been kept in a gulag on the other side of the world, wondering if you’re ever going to be free again,” he said, noting that he had personally raked up more than $20,000 in fees and penalties for not paying his taxes when he was wrongfully detained.

“Talking to folks at the IRS, it’s not like they don’t want to help you, but they don’t have a legal mechanism to help you. All of this stuff requires legislation. It requires some care, some interest, some research, and frankly, the SPEHA office’s job is to bring people home; the reintegration is not really the focus,” Rezaian added.

A bipartisan group of senators and House members introduced the Stop Tax Penalties on American Hostage Act back in March, which would postpone tax deadlines, refunds, and late penalties for Americans who are wrongfully detained abroad. It is not yet law.

“His story has led to real legislation getting passed,” Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), co-chair of the Congressional Task Force on American Hostages and Americans Wrongfully Detained Abroad, told the Washington Examiner. “We passed not only a Hostage Recognition Day, but we also carved out resources for families as they are trying to coordinate on behalf of their wrongfully detained loved one as they work with the federal government. But we do have more to do, and I’m going to continue working with Paul and other hostage families to get them the help and support they need, especially when they come home.”

Each hostage who returns has suffered different experiences and will face different challenges upon their return. Some hostages were held for months, and others for many years.

“It’s not just like the physical and mental healthcare are issues that people have when they come back, like rebuilding their life, getting their finances back in order, finding employment, it’s what is their housing situation now, and right now, the government really isn’t equipped, or doesn’t really have that defined pathway back for people,” Elizabeth Richards, Director of Hostage Advocacy and Research for the Foley Foundation, told the Washington Examiner.

Possible Changes

SPEHA’s role and responsibilities are continuing to evolve. Part of the effort involves informing Americans which countries they could be at risk in and dissuading them from going to those places.

Once an American is arrested abroad, the State Department’s gathering of the facts can take days, weeks, or months, depending on the specifics.

But time matters, especially for the person being detained because they are an American citizen.

Butorin, Kurmasheva’s husband, emphasized the need for his wife to be given the designation weeks before her release last summer. He still believes the label should have been applied months earlier, which would have put her case under SPEHA from the time the designation was found.

“At the time, we were certain that Alsu met all of the 11 criteria listed in the Levinson Act. It was just reprehensible to me why she was not being designated,” he told the Washington Examiner. “That whole designation is so opaque, and very little information is communicated to the families, I’m just talking from my own experience, but I hope it’s changed now.”

Carstens believes more should be done to address the financial burden of having a loved one wrongfully detained. The hostage obviously stops working when they’re being held, but in many cases, a loved one will as well, to focus exclusively on advocating for their loved one.

“If someone’s taken as a prisoner by a terrorist group or nation state, someone in their family usually stops working, in order to advocate for their loved one’s release. Elizabeth Whelan, for example, basically put her life on hold to pursue her brother Paul’s return,” he said, referencing Paul’s sister. “As a result, the family member forgoes the financial benefits provided by a job, and in turn takes on the burden of paying for trips to Washington, D.C. to meet with the State Department and members of Congress.”

“While the U.S. Government now pays for the family of a hostage to come to D.C. twice a year, it is not enough,” he said. “I would like the government to consider giving stipends to both the wrongful detainee and the family member who has left their job to work for the return of their loved one.”