WASHINGTON — After the White House secured the release of WNBA star and Houston native Brittney Griner from Russian prison in early December — the U.S.’s second prisoner swap of the year with Russia — it committed to bringing home all other Americans wrongfully detained abroad.
Now that the Biden administration has shown it is willing to engineer deals to secure the safe return of U.S. nationals, relatives of and advocates for other Texans currently detained or held hostage abroad, including journalist Austin Tice and former Green Berets Airan Berry and Luke Denman, are pushing anew for them to come home in 2023.
Griner was not the only American — or even the only Texan, at one point — Russia has wrongfully detained, a designation the Department of State reserves for cases in which the circumstances of the detainee’s detention suggest they were arrested on discriminatory or arbitrary grounds.
