Pay Americans wrongfully held in other countries.
H.R. 10464 — Paul Whelan Hostage Compensation and Reintegration Act · Filed by Haley Stevens (D-MI) · Introduced Sep 16, 2026 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
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What it does
This bill sets up a program to pay U.S. citizens and permanent residents who were wrongfully held abroad. Each person gets a one-time payment. The payment is based on days held, using the average daily U.S. wage. People who traveled to countries with high-level travel warnings cannot get paid. Exceptions exist for government workers, reporters, and cases with strong humanitarian reasons. The bill is named after Paul Whelan, a U.S. citizen held in Russia.
Who it affects
Wrongfully detained Americans and permanent residents get paid. Their families get paid if the person died.
One thing to notice
The bill does not set a spending limit. If many people are wrongfully held, costs could grow very large.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
- Sep 16, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Sep 16, 2026 — Referred to House Committee on Ways and Means and House Committee on Foreign Affairs · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committee on Ways and Means, for a…”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Words to know
- wrongfully detained — held in prison or jail without a legal reason.
- permanent residents — people who are not U.S. citizens but have legal permission to live in the U.S.
- travel warnings — official notices that tell people a country is unsafe to visit.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (8,093 characters) on Sep 25, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 14,985 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
As of — page rendered 2026-09-25.
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