WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department on Monday designated Afghanistan as a sponsor of wrongful detention as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations separately called out the country for engaging in what he said was “hostage diplomacy.”
With the designation, Afghanistan joins Iran as countries singled out by the U.S. in the past two weeks for their practice of detaining Americans in hopes of extracting policy concessions. Iran was given an identical designation on Feb. 27, one day before the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against the Islamic Republic in what has since become a war in the Middle East.
The designations are designed to ramp up pressure on both nations to stop taking Americans hostage or risk penalties.
“The Taliban continues to use terrorist tactics, kidnapping individuals for ransom or to seek policy concessions. These despicable tactics need to end,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “It is not safe for Americans to travel to Afghanistan because the Taliban continues to unjustly detain our fellow Americans and other foreign nationals.”
Rubio called on the Taliban to release Americans believed to be in its custody, including Dennis Coyle, an academic researcher detained in the country since January 2025, and Mahmood Habibi, an Afghan American businessman who worked as a contractor for a Kabul-based telecommunications company and vanished in 2022. The FBI and Habibi’s family have said they believe Habibi was taken by Taliban forces, but the Taliban has denied holding him.
Eric Lebson, a former National Security Council official who serves as chief strategy officer at Global Reach, a nonprofit that is working on the cases of Habibi and other detained Americans, praised the designation as a “clear message from the Trump administration to the Taliban that they hold the keys to resolving four cases of Americans who were arrested in their country and nothing will move forward in the US/Afghanistan relationship until that happens.”
Also on Monday, Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., accused Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders of engaging in “hostage diplomacy,” pointing to innocent Americans being detained. He also questioned the $1 billion in humanitarian aid being sought for the country when its leaders deny Afghan women their basic rights.
Waltz told a U.N. Security Council meeting that the Taliban’s actions “demonstrate bad faith” and have made the U.S. “deeply skeptical of their willingness to meet their international commitments or respect Afghanistan’s international obligations.”
He said this concern applies to the Doha peace deal that President Donald Trump signed with the Taliban in February 2020, which led to the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban takeover of the country, and its harsh crackdown on the rights of women.
“While the United States continues to participate in the (Doha) process and its working groups, we doubt the Taliban’s motives,” Waltz said. “We cannot build confidence with a group that continues to detain innocent Americans and ignores the basic needs of the Afghan people.”
Lederer reported from the United Nations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio takes part in a U.S. Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Flag Raising ceremony at the State Department, Monday, March 9, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)
The hourslong security lines at a handful of U.S. airports this week highlight the potential problems when a government shutdown coincides with the busy spring break travel season.
Houston’s secondary airport weathered the worst problems, with lines consistently lasting over three hours for much of Sunday and Monday. Passengers also had to wait more than an hour to get through security at several other airports, including in New Orleans and Atlanta.
The surge of millions of travelers as schools take spring breaks would put pressure on even a fully staffed airport system. With the staffing problems that tend to accompany a government shutdown, some airports are are beginning to feel more pressure. Still, most airports have not experienced significantly long security lines.
The longer Transportation Security Administration officers have to work without pay during the partial shutdown, the more likely it is that some will miss work as they take on second jobs to pay for necessities like gas and child care and their other bills. Many may still be rebuilding finances after the 43-day shutdown last fall, the longest in history.
Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the TSA union’s bargaining unit, said workers will miss their first full paychecks this weekend since the shutdown began Feb. 14. He said morale among the workforce “has taken a severe hit.”
“Over the last 15 months, TSA officers have went through three government shutdowns,” he told The Associated Press.
Jones, who also works as a TSA agent, said it took months for him to financially recover from the 43-day shutdown.
“I refilled my water buckets and now I’m starting to empty them again. Some people were not so fortunate to be able to refill their water buckets,” he said.
This current shutdown has only affected the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats in Congress refused to fund the department because they objected to its immigration enforcement tactics. Democratic lawmakers have said DHS won’t get funded until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year.
The TSA and Homeland Security have consistently blamed Democrats for the long security lines.
“This chaos is a direct result of Democrats and their refusal to fund DHS. These political stunts force patriotic TSA officers, who protect our skies from serious threats, to work without pay,” said Lauren Bis, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of Homeland Security. “These frontline heroes received only partial paychecks earlier this month and now face their first full missed paycheck, leading to financial hardship, absences, and crippling staffing shortages.”
Chris Sununu, president and CEO of the Airlines for America trade group, reiterated his plea for Congress to end the shutdown.
“More than 2.7 million people cleared through TSA yesterday, but too many had to wait in extraordinarily long—and painfully slow—lines at checkpoints," Sununu said in a written statement Monday. “It’s unacceptable to have wait times of 2 or 3 hours. And it’s unacceptable that TSA officers will have $0 in their paychecks this week.”
But Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee rejected the notion that they were to blame for TSA officers going unpaid.
“FACTS: Democrats introduced a clean bill to fully fund TSA with no conditions. Republicans blocked it,” the Homeland Democrats group said on X. “Republicans would rather disrupt our travel than rein in ICE. It’s shameful.”
The country's longest security lines have been reported at the William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, with wait times topping three hours. Video from New Orleans on Sunday showed the security line stretching out of the terminal and across a parking garage as the wait there peaked at 77 minutes.
The lines at both those airports had eased by Monday afternoon, but Hobby airport was still reporting a two-hour wait for security and officials were urging travelers to get to the airport at least three or four hours ahead of their flights. The wait time in New Orleans was reported at 10 minutes in the late afternoon.
But more problems could pop up if a security shift is short on screeners when it's busy.
Neither the Houston airport authority nor TSA would answer questions Monday about why Hobby airport is so prone to long delays during the shutdown. Hobby is smaller than George Bush Intercontinental Airport, which handles roughly three-quarters of all the passengers passing through Houston. But Hobby still handled nearly 15 million passengers in 2024.
Airline passengers wait in long lines outside the terminal to get through the TSA security screening at William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)
