Trump asks Europe to take back 800 ISIS fighters captured in Syria so they can't 'permeate Europe'

President Trump
(Image credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)

President Trump on Twitter late Saturday asked the United States' European allies to collect and contain hundreds of Islamic State fighters the United States has captured in Syria:

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The fighters in question are Europeans who traveled to the Mideast to back the Islamic State. In some cases, "fighter" may not be a fair characterization; for example, a London teenager named Shamima Begum, now 19, recently gave birth after traveling to Syria in 2015 to marry an ISIS militant. She may never have personally acted as a combatant and now seeks to return to the United Kingdom.

While France will repatriate and, in some cases, prosecute French nationals among these captured hundreds of ISIS affiliates, other nations, most notably the United Kingdom, have been less willing to do so with ISIS recruits from their countries. The situation is coming to a head as the fight against ISIS in Syria winds down; U.S.-backed Syrian forces said Saturday the terrorist group today controls just 700 square meters of Syrian territory.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.