A total of 47 Americans have been freed in Trump’s first 100 days—an unusually rapid pace for overseas detainee releases.
Kuwait has released an additional 10 American detainees, U.S. officials confirmed on Thursday, marking the second such release in as many months and bringing the total number of Americans freed during President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office to 47.
The latest wave of pardons, announced on May 1 by Adam Boehler, the Trump administration’s top hostage envoy, comes amid the administration’s focus on making hostage and detainee diplomacy a key part of its foreign policy.
“
10 more Americans are coming home after being imprisoned in Kuwait all thanks to [President Donald Trump],” Boehler wrote in a post on social media. “This brings the total to 23 people released since March. I want to thank the government of Kuwait for their responsiveness and goodwill.”Kuwait, a U.S. ally with a longstanding military partnership dating back to the 1991 Gulf War, has held a number of American military contractors and veterans for years on drug-related charges and other offenses. Families and advocates have alleged widespread abuse, including coerced confessions and trumped-up charges levied by corrupt law enforcement.
Among those freed on Wednesday was Tony Holden, a Memphis-based HVAC technician and longtime defense contractor who had worked in support of Camp Arifjan, a major U.S. military installation in Kuwait that serves as a logistics hub for American forces in the region.
Holden’s supporters
say he was “set up by corrupt Kuwaiti police looking to earn bonuses,” that he was coerced into signing a written confession in Arabic, and that his wife and daughter were physically threatened during the ordeal. They say his drug possession charge and sentence came in spite of his testing negative in a drug test and abstaining for religious reasons from drug and alcohol use.
In a video
message following his release, Holden thanked Trump directly.
“There have been a lot of people behind the scenes who have done a lot of great work,” Holden said. “I wanted you to hear that directly from me. And again, God bless you and your family.”
Sebastian Gorka, a senior White House counterterrorism official, also marked the release,
posting on X: “47 hostages in 100 days thanks to the President. This is today, Dulles Airport. Tony Holden ... is home. Because of President @realDonaldTrump. 47 for 47.”
The latest group of freed detainees includes both men and women, some of whom had spent years in Kuwaiti prisons. Their release follows a March
wave in which 10 Americans were also released shortly after Boehler’s visit to Kuwait. While countries such as Venezuela have released Americans over longer periods of time, it is rare for so many U.S. citizens to be freed in such rapid succession.
Private consultant Jonathan Franks, who represents nine of the 10 Americans released this week, confirmed that all maintained their innocence and said their cases involved no victims and were based on confessions obtained without translation.
Jonathan Franks, a private consultant specializing in cases involving U.S. hostages and detainees, said in a
post on X that some of those released by Kuwait were his clients.
Calling it a “great day,” Franks also thanked the Trump administration for helping secure the detainees’ release.
“My clients are home today because of the personal diplomacy of Adam Boehler, who came to Kuwait to make the case for these Americans to our Kuwaiti friends,” Franks said in a
statement. “Rather than reading Levinson with blinders on in search of excuses to continue leaving Americans behind, the Trump Administration has looked for reasons to bring Americans home.”
The Kuwait announcement came on the same day the Trump administration
secured the release of another American detainee—this time from Belarus.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the release on social media,
calling it a milestone in the administration’s push to repatriate Americans held overseas.
“Thanks to @POTUS’s leadership, Belarus has released another wrongfully detained U.S. citizen. No president has done so much, so quickly, to keep Americans safe abroad,” Rubio
wrote on X.
Family members later identified the individual as Youras Ziankovich, a naturalized U.S. citizen, lawyer, and democracy advocate who had been imprisoned since 2021. He was abducted in Moscow by Belarusian agents and sentenced in a closed-door trial that was widely condemned by human rights groups.
Ziankovich’s case was one of several involving Americans detained in Belarus. In February, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt
announced that three individuals—including one U.S. citizen—had been released as a result of Trump’s direct engagement.
