Earlier this week, federal agents made a series of arrests on American soil that are raising alarm bells. Two sources tell CNN that eight Tajikistan nationals were apprehended in multiple cities by US Immigration and customs enforcement. One source said when the group initially crossed the US Southern border, there were no initial red flags. But a second source said, thanks in part to a controversial foreign surveillance program, authorities identified possible ties to ISIS. Yes, ISIS. The self-declared caliphate may have fallen five years ago. But US officials are warning that overseas terror groups are part of a mix that's presenting an elevated threat to the US. And remember, offshoots like ICIS-K have recently carried out attacks overseas. Bloodshed at the concert hall near Moscow. Gunmen running a mock before setting the crowded building ablaze, killing more than 130 people inside. And it's worth noting, the people who followed the original ICIS in Iraq and Syria were not just militants. There were plenty of women and children living under harsh rule. So five years later, what became of them? And who gets to decide what their futures look like? My guest today is CNN Chief International Correspondent, Clarissa Ward.

She recently got unprecedented access to a series of detention centers in Syria that humanitarian groups are calling a legal black hole. From CNN, This is One Thing. I'm David Reind. Clarissa, you've been tracking what happened in the Middle East after the fall of ISIS five years ago, can you remind us what exactly happened to all the women and children who were living under the caliphate?

I think, David, that a lot of people assume that after the defeat of ISIS, they just disappeared and went away. Everybody has been so focused on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza that the world's attention hasn't really been focused on ISIS so much anymore. People might be surprised to learn that five years after the fall of ISIS's self-declared caliphate, there are 50,000 ISIS followers and their family members who are being held in a constellation of prisons and camps across northeastern Syria. These dissension centers are under the control of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF. They are the people who really led the charge on the ground in the fight against ISIS, and have now been left with the responsibility of dealing with these tens of thousands of people who basically are living in a black hole.

Wow, that's a lot of people. What does that look like?

The largest camp that has become pretty notorious is called Al Hall, and there are more than 40,000 people living there, among them, some 6,700 foreign nationals. The foreign nationals all live in a part of the camp that's known as the Annex. The Annex has become very dangerous and very difficult to govern, if you will. The SDF themselves don't go in there regularly, except during security raids. On recent raids, they have found weapons, they have found explosives, they have found brutal videos that appear to show... One showed a woman being beheaded, another showed children being trained inside the camp. These are videos that they have found on the phones of various people who are living inside that camp. You can see just how vast this place is. More than 40,000 people are living here in the most dangerous part of the camp. We managed to get very rare and unusual access to the annex. It's very striking when you spend a bit of time in there. Firstly, how many of the women are still deeply radicalized? I understand, but what about you? Do you still... Do you regret your decision to join ISIS? Why should I regret?

We talked to women who really had no regret or remorse about joining ISIS, but they did have a lot to say about the conditions in the camp.

Normally, even with enemies, women and children need for health services. For example, tents. Man, you see?

Yes. I want to be very clear, the conditions in the camp are dire. There is very little medical care, for example. The women complained that there wasn't enough water, that there's no electricity, that prices in the market were very high. But the most common complaint that we heard from the women that we spoke to, and we talked to women from Russia, from Azerbaijan, we spoke to Uyghur Muslims from China, and all of them told us a similar story.

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Which is that when boys in the camp turn about 12 years old, the SDF come in, often in the middle of the night, and take them. She's asking if she can get her son back who's in a prison.

Why?

The SDF basically says that this is a policy that they've come up with because the mothers are radicalizing their children. Their concern is that if the boys stay with their mothers, they're going to become more radical, they're going to become older and stronger. Before they know it, they're going to have an ISIS army in the Al-Hal camp.

It's like this ideology will to just keep going and going and going.

Exactly. Because they don't have a system set up to try to deradicalize these women, they say it's too dangerous to leave young boys in the camp. The other very disturbing allegation we heard is that boys as young as 14 are being married off, and I use that in inverted commas, to try to repopulate the next generation of ISIS fighters. But We can understand, David, and we have heard from many human rights organizations, also from a UN special rapporteur who did an extensive report on the Al Hoel camp in these various detention facilities, that this constitutes a major violation of the rights of the child. Okay, so Anastasia. We visited a place called the Orkesh Rehabilitation Center, and that's where some of these boys, after their separated from their mothers, are taken to. It was really striking. We interviewed a young man called Shamel, who could not remember how old he was. Mabatar, if you don't know. He said that he grew up in Cologne, in Germany until his parents decided to move the family to Raqqa in Syria, which was the capital of Isis's caliphate. Shamel was separated from his family. In the middle of the night, a few years back, he said it was a pretty traumatic scene.

His mother was screaming, twisted his arm behind his back and started telling Shamel to put his shoes on, and Shamel refused. He said that the man hit him. Shamel says that he has never seen a lawyer, that he has no idea what the future holds for him, where he will end up.. Tell me your name. Islamska. Islamska. We talked also to a 12-year-old boy called Islamska, who did not know his last name. He is from Daghestan in Russia. He had been in the rehabilitation center for 3-4 months.. He talked about missing his mom a lot, about wanting to return to the camp with his mom. You can see that for a child that young, that vulnerable, who has ended up in Syria through no fault of their own, just how terrifying and horrifying, frankly, that ordeal is. The counterargument that the SDF gives is, Hold on a second. Rather than criticizing us, why don't you come and work with us to try to improve this situation and help us deal with it? Because the SDF, they don't have the resources to set up a full deradicalization process for the women. They don't have the resources to set up some a court system.

Even the ones who go through the deradicalization process, there's nowhere for them to go at the end of it, because most of these countries, or many of them, are just not taking ISIS detainees and their families back to their countries of origin. That's where the US comes in.

I'm struck that this is all being run by the SDF, which is backed by the United States. You and I have talked a lot about how the Biden administration has come under a ton of pressure for continuing to back Israel as it fights Hamas in Gaza despite these accusations of war crimes and starvation, which, of course, Israel denies. But I guess I'm wondering how a power like the US responds to backing the SDF in the face of these stories that you heard firsthand.

The first thing that the US is really shouting from the rooftops right now is that all of these countries, and in Al Hoel camp, there are more than 60 different nationalities represented. All of these countries need to take their citizens home. It has become a political issue, particularly here in Europe, in the UK, in Belgium, but also in Australia, and a a number of other countries where people have basically said, We don't want you back. You made your choice. The SDF will say, Well, hold on a second. It's not our fault that your citizens went and joined ISIS, and why should we be left with the responsibility to take care of them. The US has really tried to push for countries to repatriate their people, not just for reasons of humanitarian law, international law, but also for reasons of security. The big fear here is that with these prisons and with these camps, if there was a massive convulsion of violence or instability in the region, which is not impossible, that you could have an ISIS army reconstituting overnight.

Just because you have all those people there that they could draw from, and then it becomes this big thing.

Exactly. Can I look inside? We also managed to get access to Panorama Prison. There are roughly 4,000 ISIS inmates or ISIS-affiliated inmates being held there at the moment. It's basically the largest concentration of ISIS fighters in the world. The head of the prison has asked me to put on a head scarf while we walk through here because these are some of the most radicalized prisoners they have. Now, in 2022, there was a prison break. Hundreds of fighters escaped. There was days of fighting. Ultimately, most of those who escaped were either killed or re-arrested. But nonetheless, it sent a shiver down many people's spines because it made it clear just how vulnerable a lot of these prisons are. Panorama has been partially now rebuilt, primarily with US funding, but there are other prisons as well across this part of the country. Just a few weeks ago, we were told by a senior US official that there had been a car bomb outside of a detention facility in a town called Shadadi, which they believed was, again, a dry run or a trial run to look at attempting another prison break. It gives you a feel for the complexity of this situation which is growing into a larger crisis by the day, which has profound ethical and humanitarian implications, but which also could rapidly turn into a very dangerous situation.

Yeah.

I guess I'm wondering because there is the argument for some of these adults anyways that you went and joined the ISIS, then this is the punishment that you have to deal with. But did you meet anybody that was really repentant about their situation and feel hopeless that they've been forgotten, even though they renounced what they did.

We did. I think what you see a lot in these camps is that, repentance is required or demanded, but forgiveness is rarely given. I have to ask you, I'm seeing all of the women here are fully covered, a lot of them covering their faces. You're not covered. You're wearing a T-shirt. Is that hard?

It was hard when I first took it. I would say for the first two, three years, people were not accepting of it, and they harassed us a lot. They stole our stuff. I had to stay strong as an example for my son.

We spent some time with a 30-year-old woman called Holden Mathana, who has been in Alroge camp for more than five years with seven-year-old son.

If I didn't have my child, I couldn't have handled this at all.

She was born and raised in the US and became radicalized when she was about 19, 20 years old, online, and decided to leave her family in Alabama and travel to live under ISIS. She pretty quickly realized that this was a huge mistake that she had made, and she desperately wanted to escape and to return home. Now, the US has essentially said that Hoda Mathana is not actually American because her father was a diplomat and so technically, because of diplomatic immunity, they say she was not a US citizen. However, she had two US passports. She traveled to Syria on a US passport. She was born and raised in the US. Her entire family lives in the US, and she has never lived anywhere else. But like so many, she finds herself in this legal limbo.

If I were to have the choice between an American prison in this camp, I would choose an American prison any day. Any day.

Again, I think this just goes to illustrate the complexity that you see here, and even for those who who demonstrate genuine remorse, who have suffered, who, like Hoda, are willing to go through the judicial process in their home countries and face trial and do the time.

She's saying, If I go back to the US, if I have to go to prison, so be it.

So be it. She said her words, To go to prison in the US would be a step forward. It would mean at least my life is moving forward, and I would serve my time and then start my with my son.

I just want to breathe American air and be around people. I love the people of America. They're very open and they're very forgiving, and they're people who give second chances. I think if they were to sit down with me and listen to my story from the beginning, they would give me a second chance.

But for now, that isn't an option for Hoda, and many like her, and they continue to sit and wait in these camps.

Clarissa, thank you so much.

Thank you, David.

One Thing is a production of CNN audio. This episode was produced by Paula Ortiz and me, David Reind. Our senior producer is Fez Jamil. Our supervising producer is Greg Peppers. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Dizula is our technical director, and Steve Ligtai is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manisari, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Lanie Steinhart, Jamie Sandrace, Nicole Pessereau, and Lisa Namarau. Special thanks to Brent Swales, Eliza Macintosh, and Katie Hinman. We'll be back on Wednesday. I'll talk to you then.