Years after their son left the U.S. to join ISIS, a Minnesota couple learned they had two young grandsons trapped in a Syrian desert camp. They were determined to rescue them. Dion MBD for NPR/NPR hide caption
toggle caption
Dion MBD for NPR/NPR
Years after their son left the U.S. to join ISIS, a Minnesota couple learned they had two young grandsons trapped in a Syrian desert camp. They were determined to rescue them.
Dion MBD for NPR/NPR
When ISIS was at its height, its ranks included several hundred Americans. They were often young men radicalized online by savvy marketing that promised free housing and the chance to meet a wife.
When the Islamic State collapsed, some of them ended up in huge detention camps in Syria, and the U.S. has been trying to bring them home.
NPR’s Sacha Pfeiffer reports on one American family coping with the aftermath of the child they lost, and the children they found.
What happened to the families of the Americans who joined ISIS? Not just the families they left behind in the U.S., but the ones they formed overseas?
For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
Email us at [email protected].
This episode was produced by Monika Evstatieva and Kathryn Fink. It was edited by Barrie Hardymon Robert Little; Research by Barbara Van Woerkom; translation by Linah Mohammad and Fatma Tanis and audio engineering by Robert Rodriguez.
