Dennis Coyle, a U.S. citizen detained by the Taliban in Afghanistan since late January 2025, arrived in San Antonio on Wednesday, according to The Daily Wire and a statement posted by his family. His case had drawn public attention from relatives and advocacy groups urging U.S. officials to press for his release.
Dennis Coyle, an American academic researcher who spent years working in Afghanistan, returned to the United States on Wednesday after being held by the Taliban for more than a year, according to The Daily Wire and a statement released by his family.
The Daily Wire reported that Coyle landed in San Antonio, Texas, on the morning of March 25, 2026, and reunited with relatives after what his family described as 421 days of uncertainty. In a message posted Tuesday on a website run by his family, they said, “Today, our hearts are filled with overwhelming gratitude and praise to God for sustaining Dennis’ life and bringing him back home after what has been the most challenging and uncertain 421 days of our lives.” The family also thanked President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as several officials involved in the effort, including Sebastian Gorka.
Coyle’s relatives and U.S.-based advocacy organizations had previously described him as a linguist and academic researcher who had worked in Afghanistan for roughly two decades. The James Foley Foundation, which says the U.S. government classified Coyle as wrongfully detained, reports he was detained without charges by the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence on January 27, 2025, while legally working and that he had not been charged with a crime.
The Daily Wire said Trump pledged to “take care of it” after NewsNation host Katie Pavlich raised Coyle’s case in an interview about two months before his return.
In placing Coyle’s release in a broader pattern of detentions and releases, The Daily Wire said he was the sixth American freed by the Taliban since Trump returned to office in January 2025. It listed earlier releases as Ryan Corbett and William McKenty in January 2025, George Glezmann and Faye Hall in March 2025, and Amir Amiri in September 2025.
Independent reporting supports much of that timeline: The Associated Press and other outlets reported that Corbett and McKenty were freed in January 2025 as part of a U.S.-Taliban prisoner swap that was negotiated during the final days of the Biden administration. Separate reports in March 2025 said Glezmann was released, and CBS News reported Amiri’s release after roughly nine months in detention.
The Daily Wire also said at least two Americans were still believed to be in Taliban custody: Mahmood (also spelled Mahmoud) Habibi, an Afghan-American who disappeared in 2022, and Paul Overby, an American author who went missing in Afghanistan in 2014. The Foley Foundation has similarly highlighted the Habibi and Overby cases and has said Overby’s fate remains unknown.
The Daily Wire attributed the detentions to the period after the Taliban regained nationwide control in 2021 following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. That chronology is widely documented, though specific conditions for individual detainees and the precise roles of U.S. officials in negotiating Coyle’s release were not independently confirmed in the Daily Wire report beyond the family’s statement and the outlet’s account.
