Media
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News
February 23, 2026
Monday 23 February 2026
Greg Brown and Mohammad Alfares
The Australian
The Coalition is proposing criminal penalties of up to 10 years jail for people who help ISIS brides come to Australia, after Kurdish authorities revealed the Syrian camp that has been housing them will be shut sooner than expected.
As Angus Taylor moves to sharpen his credentials as being tough on national security, Labor is facing a narrowing window to act on Australian ISIS-linked detainees in Syria.
Al‑Roj camp in northeast Syria, one of the final facilities detaining families of Islamic State fighters, was set to be fully emptied “in the near future”, a Kurdish camp official said, with reports suggesting it could even close within weeks.
The early closure will remove the controlled detention site that has allowed Canberra to keep the women and children offshore. And while the detainees hold Australian passports, it is unclear whether the government will be able to prevent their return if any formal repatriation process fails.
While the Albanese government has denied playing a role in repatriating the cohort of 34 women and children who are pushing to return to Australia, the Coalition has drafted a bill to make it illegal for any Australian assisting their goal to return.
Leading members of Save the Children Australia and prominent doctor Jamal Rifi are among those who have been reported as assisting the repatriation of ISIS-linked detainees in Syria.
The Coalition-proposed bill – backed by the shadow national security committee of cabinet on Sunday – would make it a criminal offence to facilitate the re-entry of “individuals linked to terrorist hotspots or terrorist organisations”. It would also be an offence to assist the return of Australian citizens who have committed terror-related offences.
The Opposition Leader said the Coalition would “strengthen our laws to protect Australia’s way of life”.
“We will take action and refuse to let people come here who abandoned Australia to support Islamic extremist terror overseas,” Mr Taylor said.
“We must shut the door to people who do not share our values – and these people rejected our values in favour of terror. Anthony Albanese should come to the table and support these laws.”
Opposition home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam said the Coalition “will not allow third parties to facilitate the return of individuals who chose to align themselves with ISIS”. “This legislation sends a very clear message: anyone who travels to a designated terrorist hotspot, such as Syria, to support a death cult like ISIS does not deserve to come back to Australia,” he said.
The Coalition’s move came as Kurdish camp administrator Sheikhmous Ahmed told local media a joint decision between the local Autonomous Administration and the Syrian Democratic Forces had been made over the weekend to empty the camp sooner than expected, but did not provide a date.
“For this purpose, co-ordination has taken place with the High Commissioner for Refugees regarding their transfer,” Mr Ahmed said, adding that repatriations would now be handled directly between the Kurdish authorities and individual government authorities.
Mr Ahmed also said the area around the camp was stable and free of ISIS cells.
“Previously, contacts were conducted through the global coalition and the SDF’s foreign relations office,” he said. “Now, any country wishing to repatriate its citizens must directly contact the Autonomous Administration, and we are ready to provide all necessary facilitation.”
Once the facility is dismantled, it is unclear where the Australian detainees will be held or what level of security will apply.
The Prime Minister said on Sunday the full force of the law would be applied to anyone who returned to Australia, but opposition defence spokesman James Paterson said he was “not filled with confidence by that answer”.
“These are people who left our country – a prosperous, peaceful, liberal democracy – to go and join ISIS, the Islamist caliphate that viciously persecuted ethnic minorities and religious minorities, including with rape, torture and murder,” Senator Paterson said.
“(They) went to a declared area in defiance of Australian law, every one of them should face charges if they ever find their way back home, but frankly, the priority should be keeping them offshore where they can do no harm to Australia.”
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on Sunday signalled the government was able to track the 11 families for a long period of time while they were placed at the detention centres. He said some of the Australian women may hold dual citizenship, though he conceded it was unclear if any second country would recognise them.
“The majority of them were born in Australia … Immigration is a small part of the story of these individuals,” he told ABC. “Whether the countries they were from still recognise that citizenship … is something that I don’t know.”
When asked if his government was doing anything to stop the rest of the cohort from returning to Australia, Mr Burke said doing so without advice from security agencies was effectively breaking the law.
“Other than a temporary exclusion order, there’s no power to stop an Australian citizen from entering Australia,” he said.
“Are we (going to) break the law? No we’re not.”
Responding to The Australian revealing local authorities were warned that the ISIS brides were terrorists by the Australian government, Mr Burke said this was “largely a similar view to things that have been said publicly”.
Amid questions over whether the ISIS brides would be allowed into Australia and why just one exclusion order had so far been applied, Mr Burke said there were huge differences between every individual, including their backgrounds and state of mind. He said Australian citizens had rights under the passports act, and that there were provisions in that act that could be changed or activated only by ASIO in extraordinary circumstances.
“There has been no advice from ASIO that the Passport Act provisions have been activated,” he said. “The cohort is not consistent. There are very different people within that cohort.”
Mr Burke said a woman who did have a temporary exclusion order put in place against her had arrived in Australia when John Howard was prime minister.