President Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order as early as Friday to establish a designation for state sponsors of wrongful detention, CBS News reported.
The order's aim is to punish countries that illegally detain or take hostage U.S. nationals, CBS News said.
The initiative seeks to discourage Americans from traveling to those countries while pressing foreign leaders to promptly release U.S. citizens already detained there, according to the report.
Modeled after the “state sponsors of terrorism” designation, the measure would give the State Department new tools to penalize governments that hold Americans as political bargaining chips and could allow geographic restrictions on where U.S. passports may be used, according to the report.