The State Department is working to repatriate a family of 10 American citizens trapped in Syria, where they are among tens of thousands of people effectively imprisoned in desert camps and detention centers since the war against Islamic State, officials said.
The transfer would make them the largest group to return to the United States from northeastern Syria, where they are being held by a Kurdish-led militia. The US government has repatriated 40 such citizens since 2016 — 25 children and 15 adults, according to the State Department.
The group consists of Brandy Salman, 49, and nine of her children, who range in age from about 6 to about 25, and all appear to have been born in the United States. Ms Salman's husband, who was originally from Turkey, appears to have taken her and their children to IS territory around 2016 and was apparently killed later.
Detention centers in northeastern Syria typically house the families of suspected Islamic State fighters. Much remains unclear about the family's interactions with the group before the collapse of the so-called caliphate.
This ambiguity, and the apparent delay in characterizing them as Americans, reflects a broader, violent, and complex problem: Many countries have left their own citizens trapped in these camps, out of fear and uncertainty. One result is that tens of thousands of children grow up there under brutal conditions and are vulnerable to radicalization.
According to the account of one of Salman's children, a son who is now about 17 years old, the family was detained in Baghuz, where the last major IS pocket fell in early 2019. Camp guards separated him from his mother of several years ago under a controversial policy of removing teenage boys.
It is not clear what the authorities plan to do with Ms Salman, nor where or how her family will be settled. Some adults who traveled to Syria to join ISIS and were later brought back to the United States he faced prosecution on charges including conspiracy to provide material support to terrorismwhile others do not.
Her sister, Rebecca Jean Harris, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., said in an interview that about four years ago, FBI agents came to her home to ask about her sister. Ms. Harris added that Ms. Salman, informed of that visit by text, cut off communications.
Public records show Ms. Salman has lived in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and Michigan. Ms. Salman's father, Stephen R. Caravalho, of Hot Springs, Ark., said in an interview that the family had had only sporadic contact with her for years and that he last saw her in person during a visit to New York circa 2006. .
The Kurdish-led militia, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, has been the United States' main ally in the region fighting Islamic State. It is stuck holding about 60,000 people — most from Iraq and Syria, but about 10,000 from about 60 other countries — even though it is not a sovereign government.
The situation is confusing for many reasons. The SDF does not have complete and accurate records of all the people it detains. Many nations, particularly in Europe, have been reluctant to allow their citizens to return, especially men suspected of being combatants. Among other concerns, some fear that under their legal systems, any imprisonment would last only a few years.
Even children brought to the Islamic State by their parents are often stigmatized. About 50,000 displaced people, mostly women and children, live in the largest camp, al-Hol, where by some estimates half the population is under 12 years old.
The United States has campaigned for other nations to ease the problem by taking back their citizens, they say, and offered to help. Last month, for example, he flew 95 women and children in Kyrgyzstan.
Given the United States' stance, it is unclear why the Salman family was not removed from Syria long ago, he said Leta Taylor, a Human Rights Watch researcher who interviewed one of the Salman children, the son who is now about 17 years old, in May 2022 at Houry, a center for teenagers. Ms. Taylor said she told the State Department about it in November.
“It's great that the US is acting to get this family back, but why did it take so long given the horrific conditions these US citizens were subjected to?” he said. “This is a question that deserves an answer from the US government.”
Asked about the apparent delay, Ian Moss, deputy coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department, demurred but noted that it can be difficult to definitively determine who is in Syria and where they are coming from.
“Whenever we find Americans, we work as fast as we can to get them out,” he said.
In a meeting with Ms. Salman and five of her children at one of the camps in July, Mr. Moss said, she expressed her desire to return to the United States with her entire family, and his office is working to repatriate them. .
Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, interviewed the same teenager in July. Both shared notes from their conversations with him on the condition that The New York Times not print his name. The Times was unable to independently verify all the details in his account.
Around 2016, when he was around 9 and in Turkey, according to the boy's account to Ms Taylor, his father told the family they were going camping. After several days of travel, his father revealed that they were in Syria.
There, his mother largely kept the children inside because she was afraid, according to notes from the boy's account.
When the Kurdish-led militia took the family into custody in Baghuz, they sent his older brother, about 17, to an adult male prison, the notes say, separating him from his family. That brother, now about 21, is still alive, according to an official.
The youngest teenager, who is now about 17 years old himself, lived with his mother and other siblings in the Al Hol camp until early 2020. One day, in a market in Al Hol, guards seized the boy and several others teenagers without notifying their families or letting them collect their belongings, according to his account notes.
He was held in what was apparently a latrine for about a month before being transferred to the Houry center, which is sometimes described as a rehabilitation or deradicalization center for youth.
Human Rights Watch described the boy – hiding his face and using a pseudonym – in a video about children trapped in Syria after their parents took them there to join ISIS. To this he said: “It's not just me. We a lot of guys, you know. No one wants to stay as well as grow up here doing nothing. That's what we all feel.”
Ms. Ni Aolain, who is also a professor of Law, published a United Nations report after her visit to Syria, which portrays the policy of “forcibly arbitrarily separating hundreds of teenage boys” from their mothers as a systematic violation of human rights. (Human Rights Watch has also criticized this policy.)
“Every woman she spoke to identified the abduction and disappearance of their minor and adolescent boys as their main concern,” the report said, adding that other boys she interviewed described their sudden removals as “violent and causing them intense anxiety , as well as mental and psychological suffering”.
Militia officials have defended the practice on several grounds, saying it reduces the risk of pregnancy in the camps and that young men will be indoctrinated by women who are still members of the Islamic State.
More than 3,000 people were repatriated from SDF custody in 2022, more than in the previous three years combined, and 2,500 more have been arrested from their countries of origin so far this year, the State Department said.
Still, about 9,000 adult male prisoners remain imprisoned, about 2,000 of whom come from countries other than Iraq or Syria. Of Al Hall's 50,000 residents, about 7,500 are from third countries, the department said. A smaller camp, Roj, has a total of about 2,400 people, he said, and there are a few hundred teenagers in youth centers.
Since being transferred to the Houry centre, the teenager told Ms Tayler in May 2022 that an older sister had visited him twice and had occasionally exchanged letters with his mother through the Red Cross.
In her interview with the boy, Ms Ni Aolain said she expressed “great distress and concern” at his inability to communicate effectively with his mother and showed paintings and drawings depicting them together. He also talked about the missing hamburgers and rap music, he said.
“He looked like a teenage boy, except he happened to be a teenage boy in this highly coercive and structurally abusive situation,” she said.
Kitty Bennett contributed to the research.
