Albanese is prioritising politics over the responsible handling of ISIS families, setting a dangerous precedent

Thirteen Australian women and children linked to ISIS have reportedly been blocked from leaving Syria again, with the Syrian Foreign Ministry blaming the Australian government, saying it had “refused to receive them”.

The ministry said the group was turned back before reaching Damascus International Airport to make their way back to Australia.

Earlier this year, a larger group of women and children attempted to leave their detention camps in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria to make their way to Australia, but they, too, were turned back by Syrian authorities.

At a press conference on Thursday, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke reiterated the government’s stance that returning women who broke the law would face arrest. He added they may be “weighing up whether they want to come back to Australia ever”.

This comes after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said earlier this week Australia would provide “no support for repatriation and no assistance for these people”.

This is not an isolated development. Australia now appears to be moving towards an approach where repatriation is not formally undertaken, nor is it fully prevented.

Staged disengagement

At first glance, this latest case may appear to resemble an “independent return”. This means the women and children left the detention camps to try to return to Australia outside formal repatriation frameworks.

There have been rare precedents elsewhere. In the United Kingdom, Tareena Shakil famously arranged her own escape from ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and returned without government extraction. Similar cases occurred in Europe in the early years of the Syrian conflict.

But what is happening with the Australian women and children is different. They are not simply trying to escape on their own. They are attempting returns through complex and often opaque pathways, facilitated by a combination of local authorities, informal networks and pre-existing administrative processes.

Australian officials established the administrative groundwork to make these returns possible years ago when they visited detention camps (such as Al-Roj in northeastern Syria) to conduct identity checks. And in November 2022, the Albanese government conducted a one-off repatriation mission.

Now, however, the government is taking a hands-off approach until a return is already underway or inevitable. Only then is it issuing travel documents or processing individuals once they arrive.

This creates what might be described as a form of staged disengagement. The state withdraws from the politically sensitive act of “bringing people home” and instead threatens legal action if the women and children return. Any real action is deferred until the group is actually on a plane.

This approach raises a deeper question: is Australia merely outsourcing the risks and logistics of return?

Instead of managing repatriations directly, the government is placing the burden onto the women and those helping them to navigate uncertain and potentially dangerous pathways out of detention camps.

This has important consequences.

A coordinated repatriation process allows governments to control timing, gather information and prepare legal and rehabilitation responses in advance. In contrast, a fragmented and reactive return reduces visibility and limits the government’s ability to shape outcomes.

The result is a shift from proactive governance to selective engagement and prolonged inaction.

When law becomes the first response

The legal implications of this shift are significant.

When returns are unmanaged, the legal system effectively becomes the first point of state control. Rather than being one component of a broader repatriation framework, criminal law is pushed to the front of the process.

Members of the Albanese government have repeatedly stressed this fact in recent months, saying the returning women will face the “full force of the law”.

This compresses decision-making timelines and places greater weight on prosecutorial responses, often in the absence of complete evidence from conflict zones. Authorities are required to make rapid judgements about risk, culpability and prosecutions without the benefit of a structured pre-return assessment.

As a result, these ad hoc returns blur the line between policy and criminal justice. The legal system begins to absorb the functions of the government agencies that would ordinarily handle coordinated returns.

This means the law is no longer responding to policy. It is standing in for it.

Returns are happening, whether planned or not

The key takeaway is that the returns of these ISIS-linked women and children are no longer a hypothetical policy question. It is an ongoing process.

Australia’s current approach does not prevent return. Instead, it reshapes how returns occur, deflecting government responsibility.

In that sense, the issue is not simply a question of whether Australia should repatriate its citizens. It is whether a reactive, outsourced model can provide a coherent or sustainable basis for managing their returns.