As the Donald Trump administration calls on foreign governments to release Americans held in prisons where coronavirus may run rampant, a new report finds that some detainee families are having trouble getting the attention of the US government agencies meant to rescue their loved ones.

Diane Foley, whose son Jim Foley was murdered by the Islamic State (IS) in August 2014, hopes the findings will prevent other families from experiencing what hers went through trying to free Jim, a freelance journalist abducted while reporting on the Syrian civil war.

“Everyone told me he was their highest priority, but the reality was it was nobody’s mission to bring him home,” said Foley, founder and president of the Foley Foundation. 

Criticized for his administration’s handling of Foley and three other Americans captured by IS, President Barack Obama ordered a broad overhaul of US hostage policy in 2014. Out of that restructuring came an FBI-led fusion cell designed to oversee hostage cases, a State Department special envoy and a hostage response group within the National Security Council.