Courtesy – Tice Family
In 2012, Houston native Austin Tice went missing while covering the Syrian civil war as a freelance journalist.
Thursday marks the 13th anniversary of the abduction of Houston freelance journalist and former U.S. Marine Austin Tice. He was covering the Syrian Civil War when he was stopped and seized at a checkpoint near Damascus.
Following the collapse late last year of the regime of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Syrian prisons were emptied, and there was a widespread effort to find Austin Tice. He has yet to emerge.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., Debra Tice said the Trump administration gave her and her husband access to several binders full of intelligence on their son. The intelligence showed that successive U.S. presidential administrations – including the first Trump administration – had evidence their son was alive in Syrian captivity.
Screenshot/National Press Club
Debra Tice, mother of Austin Tice, speaking at the National Press Club, August 14, 2025.
Further, Debra Tice said, Assad’s regime made multiple overtures to the U.S. government over several years to return their son, but that it was clear to her why the previous U.S. administrations declined to act on those offers.
“My son is not dead,” Debra Tice said. “And it’s going to be a lot harder to find him, because he was right where we knew where he was until December 8 of 2024. We knew where our son was. They knew where our son was. Now we do have to find him. He is alive, and we will find him.”