(NewsNation) – The White House has been saying for several years Katherine Swidan that she brought home her wrongly imprisoned son China had the highest priority. But it’s been 11 years since his arrest, and now she turns to her only other option: asking Chinese President Xi Jinping to release her son.

President Joe Biden had the opportunity to discuss the matter during one earlier this week Meeting with Xi in San Francisco. However, Katherine Swidan said it was unlikely the hot topic between the two was even brought up.

“There’s speculation in various places, but I don’t have any real concrete evidence of it,” she said.

Mark Swidan, a Texan on death row in China, was arrested on drug charges in 2012 even though there was no evidence he had committed a crime. In April, a Chinese court rejected his appeal and upheld his death sentence.

In 2012, Mark Swidan traveled from Texas to China to purchase materials to remodel his home. He was arrested on charges of trafficking and manufacturing methamphetamine, but U.S. leaders argued Swidan was not in China at the time of the alleged crime. The United Nations says Swidan was arbitrarily arrested.

Katherine Swidan has been pushing for her son’s release for years and said so ahead of the Biden-Xi meeting Biden “does nothing” to help unjustly imprisoned people in China.

“I haven’t heard from him,” Katherine Swidan said. “The Chinese have decided that he has not been allowed to receive visitors since August. That was the last time he was visited by the consulate.”

She was told her son was being transferred to another prison and it would be another six weeks before she learned of him or his whereabouts. It’s been a total of three months since she’s had any contact.

On Wednesday, she told NewsNation that the last time she actually spoke to her son was in 2018, for about five minutes. Letters she received from him reveal some details about the conditions in the prison where he is being held.

“They had broken his hands five to seven times, they had interrogated him for many, many days, beaten him, I don’t know what else… but they tortured him and tried to get a video that said, that he has renounced the United States,” Swidan said. “He has since been tortured and humiliated, he has been very ill and has lost over a hundred pounds.”

Jason Poblete, an attorney for Mark Swidan, told NewsNation in April His client was treated like a political prisoner.

Katherine Swidan previously told NewsNation that she felt “in the dark” about what will be done to ensure her son’s release. She also said Biden never spoke to her directly about the case.

Now she is sending Xi a message:

“Letting Mark go after all this time would be gracious of you, and it would also show the world that hostage-taking is not just a word, that this man doesn’t deserve to be there,” she said. “Mark has to come home. My baby, my best friend.”

Katherine Swidan said she felt she would be better off asking Xi to help free her son than constantly pestering the Biden administration.

NewsNation’s Tyler Wornell contributed to this report.