WASHINGTON — In a move legal experts are calling “a paperwork issue,” the United States this week designated Afghanistan a state sponsor of wrongful detention under a framework Trump created, using criteria Trump meets, to punish behavior Trump is currently performing.
“Anyone who uses an American as a bargaining chip will pay the price,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also the official empowered to decide who counts as using Americans as bargaining chips, a determination that he says does not apply to the United States because Trump says so.
The designation activates sanctions, export controls, and travel restrictions against governments found to engage in “a pattern of unjust or unlawful detention of nationals without charges, used as political leverage.” It is the second such designation issued under the framework, after Iran was labeled on February 27, two days before the United States and Israel launched strikes against it. Afghanistan received the designation two weeks later. Officials said the timing was coincidental.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who a federal judge ruled in September had violated the Posse Comitatus Act by deploying Marines and federalized National Guard troops to conduct warrantless detentions during immigration raids in Los Angeles, praised the designation as a critical step toward domestic unaccountability. Hegseth had also federalized Illinois National Guard units and deployed them to Chicago over the governor’s explicit objection. He was not available for comment, as he was reviewing options for wrongful detention in San Francisco.
The executive order establishing the designation framework, signed by President Trump in September 2025, defines a state sponsor of wrongful detention as any government demonstrating “a pattern in which the government is responsible for, complicit in, or materially supports the unjust or unlawful detention of third country nationals.” Administration officials confirmed the definition does not apply to the American administration because Trump says so.
“The Taliban views Americans as a commodity they can grab and trade in the future,” Rubio said. “That is completely different from detaining green card holders at naturalization appointments to extract deportation cooperation from foreign governments, which is called policy.”
Afghanistan is the second country to receive the designation. It really should be third. The United States wrote the designation. At press time, no one had filed the paperwork.