Years after their son left the U.S. to affix ISIS, a Minnesota couple realized they’d two younger grandsons trapped in a Syrian desert camp. They had been decided to rescue them.
Dion MBD for NPR
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Dion MBD for NPR
In a small residence outdoors Minneapolis, I am watching two brown-haired brothers, ages 7 and 9, on a sofa taking part in chess. They’re talking Arabic sprinkled with English. They stare intently on the board, their little brows furrowed.
After a stretch of silence, the older boy strikes certainly one of his items. “Verify,” he publicizes with confidence.
“Good transfer,” says their grandfather, sitting close by.
I am impressed by their expertise and focus. “How did you be taught to play?” I ask. The grandfather places my query to them in Arabic. The older boy responds: al-sijn. I look forward to a translation.
“He realized it within the jail, he stated,” the grandfather tells me. His spouse, their grandmother, nods. “Within the jail,” she says.
Sijn — jail — is a phrase these boys use with startling frequency. It’s not a phrase you anticipate to be a daily half of a kid’s vocabulary, not to mention uttered so matter-of-factly. However months earlier than they got here to Minnesota, these two boys had been dwelling, parent-less, in an huge desert camp in Syria for kinfolk of ISIS militants. It’s variously known as a “displacement” or “detention” facility, however it’s successfully a jail. And it was their residence for 5 years — the one residence the youthful one actually remembers. They had been 2 and 4 after they arrived there.
Now, they’re dwelling with their American grandparents in the USA, a politically charged household reunification brokered by the U.S. authorities. The State Division calls it a mannequin for addressing an intractable legacy of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq: what to do with the tens of 1000’s of individuals from world wide being held in these Syrian camps, most of them the wives and offspring of males who belonged to the Islamic State, one of many world’s deadliest terrorist organizations.
An estimated 22 U.S. residents are among the many roughly 35,000 individuals within the sprawling, primitive camps, together with about 17 American kids, in line with the State Division. The 2 Minnesota boys had been there till Could 2024, after they had been flown in a navy cargo aircraft to John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport in New York to begin a brand new life within the American Midwest.
They landed within the camps via no fault of their very own: Their father is a naturalized American citizen who left the U.S. to affix ISIS a decade in the past, and began a household whereas abroad. Nonetheless, many nations are reluctant or unwilling to absorb the youngsters of ISIS fighters out of worry they could have been radicalized by extremists and will develop into future jihadists. ISIS was identified for its excessive brutality, together with beheadings and mass killings.
However U.S. officers say leaving children within the camps — that are described as a humanitarian disaster, with restricted well being care and education and excessive ranges of violence — is the better danger. The earlier they are often eliminated, officers say, the higher likelihood they will have of a traditional existence.
Each the Biden and Trump administrations have backed efforts to cut back the inhabitants of the camps. That entails taking again U.S. residents and pushing different nations, typically with American help, to repatriate their very own individuals. The State Division underneath the present Trump presidency describes repatriations as a “excessive precedence,” one which includes prosecuting some adults and returning kids to their residence nations.
“They should be saved, I consider,” stated the Minnesota boys’ grandfather, Ahmed, who requested that NPR not use his final identify as a result of he’s involved concerning the safety of his household. “They’re innocents and they need to not bear the burden of their mother and father’ errors.”
“We could not discover him”
The last decade-long chain of occasions that introduced the 2 boys to the USA has created each disgrace and pleasure for his or her household.
The person who would develop into their father, Abdelhamid, vanished throughout a household summer time trip to Morocco in 2015. He was an 18-year-old scholar on the time, nonetheless dwelling at residence. His mother and father — Ahmed and his spouse, who additionally requested to not be named for safety causes — found him lacking one morning. They scoured the home the place they had been staying, to no avail.
“We went from room to room, from ground to ground,” recalled Ahmed. “We could not discover him.”
They contacted hospitals and police precincts, questioning if he had left the home in a single day and been injured or gotten in an accident. Ultimately, Moroccan authorities checked a flight manifest and located that Abdelhamid had flown to Istanbul, Turkey.
His mother and father had been baffled. Why would he do this? Their confusion shortly turned to shock: Moroccan police informed them their son’s habits match a well-known sample, and when younger Muslim males disappear with out saying the place they are going, they’re typically trying to affix a radical group.
The police had been appropriate: Their eldest youngster, who had grown up in suburban Minneapolis and gone to a U.S. highschool and group faculty, had crossed the Turkish border into Syria and, later, Iraq, and develop into a member of ISIS.
“He left us,” Ahmed stated. “It is laborious for me to speak concerning the previous. It hurts, to be trustworthy with you. He was a good man, a useful man to us, an obedient man, doing chores, going out together with his mates, a traditional man … I imply, I could not clarify it.”
Investigators concluded that Abdelhamid, who was born in Morocco and moved together with his mother and father to the U.S. in 1998, when he was 18 months outdated, had been drawn to a jihadist mindset as an adolescent by ISIS-run Twitter accounts promising a greater life, from camaraderie to free housing to the possibility to satisfy a partner.
In accordance with courtroom information, he was “satisfied by an professional ISIS recruiter” on social media to ask himself, “How will you within the West sit in your bedrooms understanding that Muslims are struggling abroad?” and to “check his religion and to develop into an actual Muslim” by becoming a member of ISIS. On the time, the group was enslaving girls, finishing up mass executions, and staging terrorist assaults world wide. Nonetheless, the advertising labored on him, and he selected to enter the ranks of ISIS.
His mother and father, who grew to become naturalized U.S. residents within the mid-2000s, and their two different sons — Abdelhamid’s youthful brothers, who had been born within the U.S. — flew again to Minnesota with out him. Within the months that adopted, Abdelhamid sometimes reached out to his household with reassuring messages.
“He stated, ‘I am OK. Don’t fret about me,'” Ahmed recalled. Abdelhamid informed them he was learning to develop into a physician to assist injured individuals; his mother and father had been uncertain if he was telling the reality. As months handed, Ahmed and his spouse stored their household state of affairs a secret from virtually everybody, even most of their kinfolk.
Ultimately, Abdelhamid startled them once more with information that he had acquired a spouse and kids whereas overseas. In accordance with Abdelhamid, he had married the widow of one other ISIS fighter, and that girl had a son by her earlier husband. She and Abdelhamid then produced a son of their very own, elevating the 2 boys collectively.
That meant Ahmed and his spouse had been now grandparents to a pair of kids they’d by no means met, dwelling a continent away, whose father belonged to an armed extremist group.
“Did you not know that it was a terrorist group?”
Then, for almost a 12 months, Abdelhamid went silent. His mother and father stated they’d no concept what had occurred to him — till they noticed a CBS Information report in September 2019, filmed in a jail in northeast Syria housing ISIS militants. Their son was there, behind bars, being interviewed on nationwide tv.
“Did you not know that it was a terrorist group if you joined it?” the interviewer, Holly Williams, requested him.
“To be trustworthy, I used to be form of a conspiracy theorist a bit of bit,” Abdelhamid replied.
“But it surely’s a terrorist group, Abdel. It is a terrorist group that is carried out assaults,” Williams stated.
“This is the factor,” he responded. “Individuals like me that see this, to start with, do not actually consider the information.”
On display, Abdelhamid had a stump for one arm and was limping from two damaged legs, wounds he stated he sustained in Iraq. The U.S. Division of Justice says he was injured in 2016 “whereas conducting navy actions on behalf of ISIS.” His mother and father barely acknowledged him. They had been shocked and relieved. Shocked by his situation. Relieved to know the place he was.
With Abdelhamid’s whereabouts now public, the U.S. authorities organized to convey him again to the States for prison prosecution. At that time, he had been in a Syrian jail for 18 months. In September 2020, at age 23, he was transferred into FBI custody, returned to Minnesota, and charged with offering materials help to a chosen international terrorist group.
However the place had been his two boys?
In accordance with Abdelhamid, his sons had been taken away from him when he surrendered to Syrian Democratic Forces in March 2019, quickly after their mom was killed in Iraq. They had been 2 and 4 years outdated on the time. Abdelhamid did not realize it then, however it could be greater than 5 years earlier than he noticed them once more. Within the meantime, their grandparents — who knew the boys solely via pictures texted by their son — had been decided to seek out them.
Ahmed and his spouse had already misplaced one youngster. They did not need to lose one other two.
“I’m writing to see if you happen to may also help me”
Peter Galbraith is a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia who traveled to Syria to assist discover Ahmed’s grandsons.
Lucy Lu for NPR
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Lucy Lu for NPR
Their quest to find the boys led them to a former diplomat named Peter Galbraith, who had been a U.S. ambassador to Croatia, held quite a lot of roles on the United Nations, and served as a state senator in Vermont.
Galbraith has connections to Kurdish officers who assist oversee two camps in northeast Syria, known as al-Hol and Roj, that maintain principally the youngsters, widows, wives and different feminine kinfolk of useless, captured and surrendered ISIS fighters. The camps are primarily populated by Iraqis and Syrians, but additionally embody individuals from greater than 60 nations, together with the USA.
In accordance with the State Division, an estimated 25,000 kids reside within the camps, that are administered by the Democratic Autonomous Administration for North and East Syria, the civilian counterpart of the Syrian Democratic Forces. A number of the kids had been born there. Some had been introduced there by their mother and father. Some are orphans. Utilizing his Kurdish connections, Galbraith stated, he has helped get greater than two dozen kids of varied nationalities out of the camps.
A girl walks within the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria’s Hasakeh province on Jan. 30. Tens of 1000’s of principally girls and kids linked to the Islamic State group have been dwelling right here for years.
Bernat Armangue/AP
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Bernat Armangue/AP
After studying of Galbraith’s work, Ahmed wrote to him in August 2021. “Hi there, Mr. Galbraith,” his e-mail started. “I not too long ago learn [about] your involvement in serving to … to find lacking kids in Northern Syria. I’m writing to see if you happen to may also help me find my two lacking grandchildren.”
Galbraith agreed to supply help, and questioned if the boys could be within the Syrian camps, which he describes as squalid locations unfit for long-term habitation: “Limitless traces of tents, latrines which might be disgusting … tents surrounded by wire in order that no person can go away,” he stated in an NPR interview.
Galbraith despatched pictures of the boys to camp officers, together with their names, dates of start, and their mother and father’ names. Over the course of a 12 months, he made three journeys to Syria to seek for them. On his third go to, in November 2022, camp officers introduced two younger boys to satisfy him in a small workplace. Based mostly on their age and look, they appeared to be the youngsters he was trying to find. Galbraith stated the older boy appeared cautious, even distrustful.
“You possibly can fully perceive why they had been fearful, why they thought no good would come from it,” Galbraith stated. “Principally, any time they encountered anyone they did not know, one thing unhealthy had occurred. Now this particular person exhibits up, a foreigner, an American.”
However that encounter started the method of eradicating them from the camps. After a DNA check proved their identities, the boys had been transferred to an orphanage-like facility inside the camps, the place they had been in a position to have weekly video calls with their grandparents in Minnesota.
Then a community of U.S. authorities businesses — the State and Protection departments, Citizenship and Immigration Providers, Customs and Border Safety, and the Workplace of Refugee Resettlement, amongst others — labored collectively on the authorized and logistical steps required to get the boys out of the camps and to the USA.
In Could 2024, after a 12 months and a half of sophisticated negotiations, the boys arrived in New York following a prolonged journey. They had been flown from Syria to Kuwait to Germany — the place they stopped to drop off the households of some European ISIS fighters — to their ultimate vacation spot within the U.S. Arrival footage at JFK airport present the boys trying very critical, in all probability a bit of dazed, as relations they’d by no means met in particular person greeted them with hugs and balloons. One of many boys holds a small American flag.
“They definitely had been scared. I feel they had been additionally simply confused,” stated legal professional Ian Moss, a former State Division official now in non-public apply who helped coordinate the boys’ exit from the camps. “That they had been on 20-some hours of flights and at the moment are arriving at 3 o’clock within the morning at JFK to satisfy with grandparents that they’d solely seen by way of video. It needed to be disorienting, to say the least.”
Ian Moss is a former official on the U.S. Division of State who helped coordinate the grandsons’ journey to the USA.
Caroline Gutman for NPR
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Caroline Gutman for NPR
Nonetheless, added Moss, who was a part of the small crowd gathered in New York to welcome them, “To be there for that first second when the boys had been walked again to satisfy their grandparents …You possibly can simply really feel that they had been greeted with a lot love.”
“Daily is a brand new day to them”
Late final September in Minnesota, I stood in entrance of a suburban residence constructing with Ahmed and his spouse as they waited for his or her grandsons to return from their native public elementary faculty. They had been simply ending their first week of courses. A giant orange bus pulled into the car parking zone, and pressed towards one of many home windows was a brown-haired little boy with a large smile, waving fortunately. He had noticed his grandparents, who lit up on the sight of him.
“Hey! Hey! The way you doing?” Ahmed known as out because the boy, adopted by his older brother, ran to satisfy them. “How was faculty?” Ahmed’s spouse requested, wrapping her arms round them.
By then, the boys had been within the U.S. for about 5 months, and their grandparents had been exhibiting and educating them the whole lot they may — from swimming to drawing to rising tomatoes to taking part in tennis — to make up for what they hadn’t realized within the camps, Ahmed stated.
“They’ve by no means been in class,” he defined. Once they had been being held in Syria, “there was only a small classroom you’ll be able to attend for perhaps one hour,” he stated, however now “day by day is a brand new day to them. Going to highschool and studying issues they by no means noticed or touched — lots of issues: fruits, toys, expertise.”
The boys arrived within the U.S. talking primarily Arabic, however that is shortly altering. I peppered them with questions in English, they usually typically started answering earlier than their grandfather had completed translating what I might stated into Arabic.
They informed me their favourite exhibits are Shaun the Sheep, Tom and Jerry, and Mr. Bean. Their favourite toy is Spider-Man. Their favourite meals are cereal, milk, oranges and bananas — however not apples. Their favourite English phrases are, “How are you?” they usually wish to apply asking the query, at all times responding with a cheerful “good!”
After I first arrived on the household’s residence, I used to be stunned to discover a toddler there. Ahmed, who’s 56, and his spouse, who’s 48, informed me they’d a shock being pregnant just a few years in the past, so they’re now mother and father to a 3-year-old. That makes the 2 older boys, who at the moment are 8 and 10, the 3-year-old’s nephews. They name him their “child uncle,” and their grandparents informed me that the boys assume it is humorous they’ve an uncle who wears diapers.
It is a crowded home crammed with the sound of laughing kids who like consuming pizza, taking part in soccer and watching cartoons on YouTube. However the boys additionally casually inform tales concerning the deprivations of their earlier life, a reminder of how uncommon their childhoods have been by American requirements.
They’ve informed their grandparents, as an illustration, that after they lived within the Syrian camps, they’d gather erasers and crayons of their pockets, and later chew them like chewing gum. “I stated, ‘Why?'” Ahmed recalled, “they usually stated, ‘As a result of there was not sufficient meals.'” They’ve additionally described playtimes that concerned digging within the floor, mixing filth with water, and utilizing the combination to attempt to construct issues, like makeshift toys, Ahmed stated.
Ahmed and his spouse know the boys may want counseling some day to course of the whole lot they’ve gone via, however “no matter unhealthy issues occurred prior to now, we simply make them completely happy, and we’re completely happy,” Ahmed informed me. His spouse nodded, saying that she needs the boys to “overlook the whole lot.”
I requested if she thinks they’re younger sufficient for that to be potential. She informed me she believes they’ve already began to overlook.
“They know the distinction” between their life within the camps and their life within the U.S., Ahmed stated. “They usually love us greater than anyone else as a result of they know that we handle them,” he added. “We need to erase something unhealthy of their recollections. Could God assist us to attain that.”
“Life is gorgeous now”
In January 2021, Abdelhamid — after a number of months in custody again in the USA — admitted to being a “soldier of ISIS” and pleaded responsible to offering materials help to a chosen international terrorist group. Final 12 months he acquired a 10-year U.S. federal jail sentence. Throughout his June 2024 sentencing listening to in Minneapolis, he stated he regretted having joined a “loss of life cult” and informed his mother and father that his two sons are “the one good factor I’ve given you in a decade.”
His boys had been within the courtroom throughout his sentencing, marking the primary time Abdelhamid and his sons had seen one another since he surrendered to Syrian Democratic Forces in March 2019 and was separated from his kids. He now telephones them commonly from behind bars.
In an interview with NPR, Abdelhamid known as himself “a traitor to my nation” and stated he’s cooperating with U.S. authorities in different ISIS prosecutions — a declare verified by courtroom information — and hopes to do counterterrorism and deradicalization work after he’s launched.
Abdelhamid’s mother and father say as soon as his jail sentence ends, they need him to maneuver in with them and their grandchildren, their entire household underneath one roof.
“I at all times inform myself I overlook no matter he is performed to us, so far as put us on this state of affairs and this turmoil,” Ahmed stated. “I will at all times forgive him. He is my son.”
Having their grandchildren with them, Ahmed and his spouse informed me, has been extra rejuvenating than tiring, regardless of the challenges of elevating babies throughout center age whereas each holding down different jobs.
“We really feel youthful. We really feel extra energized than earlier than,” Ahmed stated. “We bought our child again and we bought our grandkids again. I imply, life is gorgeous now.”
They are saying they’re grateful for the U.S. authorities’s efforts to reunite their household. “I do know America work[ed] laborious to convey my grandkids” to the U.S., his spouse added. “Thanks a lot. I admire America for that.”
And their household may develop even bigger: Abdelhamid says he additionally had a second spouse, a daughter, and a stepdaughter whereas abroad. As was the case together with his first spouse, his second spouse was the widow of an ISIS fighter, she had a baby from her earlier relationship, after which she and Abdelhamid bore a baby collectively. Galbraith can also be trying to find these two women, however he informed NPR it’s unclear the place they’re or whether or not they’re alive.
“A critical humanitarian and a possible future safety drawback”
In fall 2024, officers from throughout the Center East, Europe and Asia convened at the USA Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., to confront a world problem: lowering the inhabitants of Syria’s al-Hol and Roj camps and addressing the dangers they pose, notably to younger individuals.
Ladies and kids stroll at Camp Roj, the place kinfolk of individuals suspected of belonging to the Islamic State group are held, in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah province in October 2023.
Delil Souleiman/AFP by way of Getty Photos
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Delil Souleiman/AFP by way of Getty Photos
“Greater than 25,000 of the displaced individuals are kids rising up in dire circumstances with out entry to schooling, alternative or social help,” Richard Verma, a deputy secretary on the State Division till January 2025, informed the gathered crowd.
Of the roughly 35,500 individuals being held within the camps — down from a peak of greater than 60,000 after ISIS’ self-proclaimed caliphate collapsed in 2019 — greater than 90% are girls and kids, in line with the U.S. State Division. Roughly two-thirds are underneath age 18 and roughly half are underneath age 12.
As well as, roughly 8,600 former ISIS fighters are in jail services throughout northeast Syria. Since 2021, about 19,000 individuals have been returned to their residence nations from the camps and prisons. The U.S. says it has repatriated 51 of its residents from Syria and Iraq since 2016, together with 30 kids. These U.S. repatriations additionally embody no less than a dozen American adults who had been prosecuted upon return, some now in jail.
Getting children out is particularly vital, Verma stated.
“So long as these kids stay within the camps,” he warned, “the worldwide group faces a critical humanitarian and a possible future safety drawback.”
The camps are closely populated by ISIS wives and widows who stay loyal to the Islamic State. Due to that, there’s concern they may radicalize the youngsters round them. “The older the youngsters get, the extra possible that they will purchase into the ideology there,” stated Galbraith. “That is why it’s so pressing to get the youngsters out at a younger age.”
Peter Galbraith can also be trying to find Abdelhamid’s daughter and stepdaughter.
Lucy Lu for NPR
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Lucy Lu for NPR
Some nations have resisted bringing residence the offspring of ISIS fighters out of worry they could possibly be a security risk. In Finland, for instance, the 2019 repatriation of two younger orphaned kids of ISIS militants was “politically very, very poisonous” and led to a “clear backlash,” Finnish Ambassador Jussi Tanner stated in a 2021 interview with Overseas Coverage. “However then steadily, with the successive repatriations,” he added, “the general public response has develop into increasingly more muted.”
By the top of 2023, almost 40 nations had repatriated a few of their residents from the camps, together with about 6,000 kids, in line with a United Nations-affiliated report printed in March 2024.
Moss, the previous State Division official who helped convey the Minnesota boys again to the USA, views the youngsters of ISIS fighters as harmless victims of poor choices made by their mother and father. “Do not punish the youngsters for the sins of their fathers,” he stated. And he cautions that if the camps aren’t dismantled, they may develop into coaching grounds for future terrorists, with worldwide penalties.
“You possibly can fake as if it’s a drawback some other place, however you do not know what the long run holds,” Moss stated. “That drawback could be at the doorstep if you happen to do not do something about it.”
U.S. officers say that prospect has develop into much more worrisome for the reason that fall of the Assad regime in Syria, which has raised fears of a potential ISIS comeback. And whereas the Trump administration’s cuts to international support earlier this 12 months briefly halted U.S. funding that helps help the camps, that funding was later restored.
“This Administration has been clear that because the dynamics within the area change, we can’t permit the safety and humanitarian challenges posed by the displaced individuals camps and detention services in northeast Syria to fester,” the State Division wrote in a press release to NPR. “Repatriation is the one sturdy answer to those challenges.”
Ian Moss sees the youngsters of ISIS fighters as harmless victims of poor choices made by their mother and father.
Caroline Gutman for NPR
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Caroline Gutman for NPR
Moss factors to the Minnesota household — Ahmed, his spouse and their grandchildren — as a hit story to this point.
“These two boys at the moment are dwelling with their grandparents and constructing lives and doing nicely,” he stated, “and that we had been in a position to hold a household collectively meant the USA was in a position to lead by instance.”
Galbraith agrees. He visited them in Minnesota in November 2024 — the primary time he had seen them since figuring out them within the camps two years earlier — and says they had been “worlds aside” from the 2 frightened kids he met in Syria.
“They had been completely happy, they had been well-adjusted, they had been relaxed. They had been simply wholesome, regular boys, and it was great,” Galbraith stated. “Simply fully great.”
This story was edited by Barrie Hardymon and Robert Little; the audio was produced by Monika Evstatieva. Analysis by Barbara Van Woerkom; artwork route and photograph enhancing by Emily Bogle; translation by Linah Mohammad and Fatma Tanis and audio engineering by Robert Rodriguez.
