Enforcement Is Not Optional

For decades and throughout the Obama administration, the State Department has used quiet diplomacy to attempt to bring abducted children home. In 2014, Congress unanimously passed the Sean and David Goldman International Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act, the Goldman Act, to give teeth to requests for return and access. The actions against noncooperating governments required by the law escalate in gravity and range from official protests through diplomatic channels, to the suspension of development, security, or other foreign assistance. Extradition of abducting parents also may be called for. International parental child abduction rips children from their homes and whisks them away to a foreign land. Child abduction is child abuse and continues to plague families across the United States. According to the State Department's statistics, approximately 1,000 children are today held hostage in a foreign country. Several hundred additional children join their ranks every year. Based on historical trends, less than a third of these children will ever come home unless the Trump administration decides to do what the Obama administration did not do: Change tack and stand up for the American parents and children using the full array of tools prescribed by the Goldman Act to help achieve the objective of bringing abducted children home.