Kayla Mueller's parents said in an exclusive interview with “Today” that despite fearing for their daughter's safety in captivity at the hands of ISIS, they were holding out hope for a reunion because of frequent contact with her captors. "We always had that little bit of hope that we would always get her home," Marsha Mueller said to Savannah Guthrie. "I really feel that we had a chance to get Kayla out," Carl Mueller said. "We were in communications with them, unlike other families. But how do you raise $6.2 million? You know, it pretty much made it impossible." Mueller was confirmed dead on Feb. 10, four days after ISIS claimed she had been killed in an airstrike in Syria. Carl Mueller has also expressed frustration with a U.S. government policy that forbids paying ransoms for the lives of American citizens, noting other Western countries have paid millions to secure the release of their nationals. "We tried, and we asked," Carl Mueller said. "But they put policy in front of American citizens’ lives."
