Coming home after being a hostage abroad

After the euphoria wears off, though, a new set of challenges will inevitably emerge. Having been cut off from society for months or years, the returning hostages will face difficulty returning to ordinary life.

When I returned home from Iran in 2016 after being imprisoned for nearly a year and a half, I found that the IRS had charged me with thousands of dollars in penalties for not filing my taxes on time. The usual penalties had compounded. I was sleeping less than three hours a night, repeatedly waking from nightmares that I was back in prison. During the day, I was distracted and having trouble concentrating. So I neglected to sit down and address the problem.

While I was locked up, my foreign-born wife’s immigration papers that had been approved before we were arrested in 2014 expired. We had to start from scratch with a new application when we got back to San Francisco.

My credit rating was also shattered. Many bills that had been set for autopay were declined and sent to collection while I was away. My credit score fell so low that renting or buying a home through traditional avenues was out of the question until I was able to rehabilitate by credit. This took many months to accomplish — and only with the assistance of people who volunteered their expertise to solve the problem.

Those returning from Russia now will face their own backlogs of work and life management. And at the same time, reporters will be clamoring for their stories. In my case, the terms of the deal that resulted in my release became a subject in all three presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Instant celebrity — even notoriety — is something most people aren’t equipped to manage. I certainly wasn’t.

From working with others who have gone through the same ordeal, I know many have had even rougher experiences. My wife and I were lucky. Our family and my employer were sources of support and strength, and we managed to right our lives. But it was challenging — and it need not have been so hard.

The U.S. government can do more to support the social reintegration of returned hostages. It can, to start, provide point people to help clear the burdens that have piled up — from renewing expired driver’s licenses and accessing health care to dealing with back taxes and financial liabilities.

Both Democrats and Republicans recognize the problem and are working to address it. In May, the Stop Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act introduced by Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) passed the Senate unanimously. The House should approve the legislation without delay.

More broadly, partisanship needs to take a back seat on this issue. For example, when basketball superstar Brittney Griner was freed in exchange for a Russian arms dealer, political backbiting was muted. That’s thanks in large part to a handful of Republican lawmakers persuading colleagues not to criticize the safe return of Americans.

Countries like Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela detain Americans solely because of their citizenship to enable them to engage in transactional hostage-taking. They ruin innocent people’s lives to extract something of value from the U.S. government. To do this, they mobilize the entire machinery of the state: law enforcement, courts, penal systems, intelligence unites, and even their pliant domestic media.

As a free society, we owe the victims of this abuse more than our support and empathy. Considerable resources were expended in the effort to negotiate their release. It is important now to invest more to return them to normal life.