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May 2025
22m 15s

Children of ISIS fighter find new life i...

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About this episode
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?

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