American family of 10 trapped in Syrian ISIS camp returns to USExBulletin

A family of 10 American citizens who were held for years in a Syrian refugee camp and detention center for relatives of Islamic State militants have now returned to the United States, the result of complex negotiations that also returned their two young sons. a Minnesota man who pleaded guilty to supporting the terrorist group ISIS.

As part of that coordinated international effort, Canada and two European countries, Finland and the Netherlands, this week brought home 11 of their citizens held in those camps, most of them children.

In total, 23 people, including 14 minors, were repatriated to their countries of origin or relocated to other countries, according to the US State Department, which led the operation. It ended early Tuesday morning, when a U.S. military jet landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport, carrying 50-year-old Brandy J. Salman and her nine children, as well as the 7- and 9-year-old sons of a 27-year-old year old -year-old man who grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis. That man, Abelhamid Al-Madioum, faces jail after fighting for ISIS in Syria as a teenager. One of Salman's grown daughters was arrested this morning, according to a US official, and details of her arrest are ongoing.

Their complicated homecomings make a small dent in a massive, pressing mass global problem: What to do with some 45,000 people from more than 70 countries being held in large, primitive desert camps in northeastern Syria near the border with Iraq. More than ninety percent are women and children, two-thirds are under the age of 18 and about half are under the age of 12, according to officials. However, the camps, which include orphans, have limited health care and schooling and are sometimes violent.

Beyond being a humanitarian crisis, the presence of so many minors living among current and former ISIS members poses a threat to global security. The camps, where children continue to be born, have been called breeding grounds for terrorists, so the US is pushing other countries to help reduce the number of camps by bringing their citizens home.

“The longer we leave them there, the more vulnerable they are to radicalization and exploitation by extremists,” said Ian Moss, the State Department's deputy coordinator for counterterrorism. “And they're vulnerable. I mean, of course these kids are vulnerable.”

But repatriation and resettlement can be a tough sell. Many countries are reluctant or unwilling to allow people who have been in the camps to return, for fear of importing jihadists.

Still, Moss said, “we really have an obligation to reduce the population and give these people a shot at a life where they're not susceptible to extremist forces to the extent that they might be if they stay there.”

To help them reintegrate into society, he added, government officials offer a wide range of support, including “psychosocial professionals and social workers,” as well as trauma counseling and bonding with family members.

Some returnees may face prosecution and imprisonment. In fact, of the 40 other Americans returned from Syrian camps in recent years, at least 14 have been prosecuted for their involvement with ISIS.

Moss said bringing camp residents home could prevent future terror attacks, and the US hopes the repatriation of nearly a dozen of its citizens this week, the largest number ever returned from northeastern Syria in a single blow, will be an example to the rest of the world.

In a statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “The only sustainable solution to the humanitarian and security crisis in displaced persons camps and detention facilities in northeastern Syria is for countries to repatriate, rehabilitate, reintegrate and where appropriate, to ensure responsibility for wrongdoing”.

It is unclear whether Salman, whose nine children were born in the US and range in age from 7 to 26, will face criminal charges. Initially, at least, she will live with her mother in New Hampshire, officials say. Salman was born in the United States and is married to a Turkish-American man, who took her and their children into Islamic State territory around 2016 and was later killed. According to an account by one of the children, the father may have tricked his family into entering Syria by pretending they were going on a camping trip to Turkey.

Eventually, Salman and her children were taken into custody and sent to a Syrian camp. Some of them were housed together there and others were sent to separate facilities for adolescent boys and men.

Salman was born in western Massachusetts, and public records show she has also lived in Michigan, New Hampshire and New York City. Her father, Stephen R. Caravalho, lives in Hot Springs, Ark., and her sister, Rebecca Jean Harris, lives in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Al-Madioum's 7-year-old and 9-year-old sons, who are awaiting a sentencing hearing to learn how much prison time he will serve, will live with their grandparents in Minnesota, according to court records.

Those records say Al-Madioum, who grew up in St. ISIS recruiter expert” on social media to “test his faith and become a true Muslim” by joining ISIS and asking himself: “How can you sit in the west in the rooms of sleep knowing that Muslims are suffering abroad?”

He became an ISIS soldier, but was injured in an explosion, breaking both his legs and losing part of his arm. He surrendered with his sons in 2019, was sent to a Syrian prison camp, returned to the US in 2020 and pleaded guilty in 2021 to providing material support to a designated terrorist organization.

The 7-year-old is Al-Madioum's biological son from an ISIS widow he married, making the child a US citizen. The 9-year-old is the woman's son from a previous relationship, Al-Madioum's stepson. The woman later died.

After Al-Madioum was imprisoned, the boys landed in an orphanage in Syria, and after being discovered there, they were able to have weekly video visits with Al-Madioum's parents in Minnesota, who will be their foster parents while Al-Madioum is in prison. . Once released, he will live with his parents and children, according to court records.

The 9-year-old boy is not a US citizen, but is being moved to the US through “significant public benefit parole,” which admits people to the country for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”

Because many children in Syrian camps are of mixed nationalities, “we have to think creatively and be flexible in order to preserve family units in cases like this,” Moss said.

US officials estimate that about two dozen other Americans are being held in Syrian displacement and detention camps, but finding and identifying them is an ongoing challenge. Even if found, not all Americans may want to return.

“People may not want to come back because they may be worried about what kind of liability might await them. They may have been away for so long that they have lost contact with their families. It may simply be fear of unknown,” Moss said. “Some of these individuals have been in these camps for four or five years and this has become their daily reality.”

As for how they ended up in the camps, “maybe there was an affinity for ideology. Bad decisions. There's certainly no shortage of individuals who may have been misled and eventually ended up there,” he added.

Of the 11 Canadian and European citizens repatriated this week, six minors went to Canada, one adult in his 20s went to Finland and two women and two minors went to the Netherlands.

In addition to the women and children in the Syrian camps, some 8,800 former ISIS militants are locked up in prisons in northeastern Syria that hold the largest concentration of detained terrorists in the world. Other displaced men are being held in Syrian refugee camps, the largest of which are called al-Hol and Roj. What to do with those men remains an even more difficult problem.

However, Moss said, “the alternative to repatriation is a possible resurgence of ISIS.”