Texas lawmakers U.S. Rep. August Pfluger (R-Odessa) and U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Austin) are sponsoring House Resolution 186 (HR 186) to free former Marine Trevor Reed from his currently Russian imprisonment.
HR 186, which has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, is calling for the "immediate release of Trevor Reed, a United States citizen who was unjustly found guilty and sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison," the resolution's language reads.
"[I'm] proud to partner with @RepMcCaul on this important measure to #FreeTrevorReed," Pfluger said in a tweet.
Reed, a Hood County in North Texas resident born in Fort Worth, was arrested in Moscow, Russia on August 16, 2019 under the accusations of "intentionally endangering the lives of government officials in their line of duty," the Free Trevor Reed website said.
"The United States will not tolerate an American citizen being held by the Putin regime as a political pawn," Pfluger said, as reported by Metro.
Trevor Reed's father, Joey Reed, has recently made renewed demand for his son's release as the U.S. Government under President Joe Biden's administration and the Russian Government relationship is deteriorating, fearing his son will become collateral damage.
"We’re concerned about the heightened rhetoric between our countries. We’re fearful that this will affect our son in the long term, and we just want to get him home before our two countries get more angry with each other. Our peoples are not the enemies; the Russian people are not our enemy. All we asked for from the beginning is that he’d be given at least the same fairness in his trial as regular Russian citizens and that was not the case," Joey Reed said, as reported by Metro.
At the time of his arrest, Trevor Reed was working toward a degree in international studies at the University of North Texas, which he began attending after he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps. Part of what fueled his interest in international studies was his Russian girlfriend Alina, whom he had met in 2016.
As a requirement to earn his degree, Reed selected Russian as his foreign language to learn, in which he traveled to Russia in May 2019 to take Russian lessons and visit his girlfriend for the summer.
It was at this time he was arrested in Moscow while being intoxicated as Russian police claimed that en route to the precinct, Reed grabbed the arm of an officer driving, causing the vehicle to swerve and endanger the lives of the officers and himself.
According to the Metro new report, the judge later sentenced him to nine years in a Russian prison after ignoring 59 minutes of traffic camera footage showing that no swerving of the vehicle in fact took place.
Resolutions for the release of Trevor Reed, along with another former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan who is imprisoned in Russia, are still pending.