A CONTROVERSIAL NEW PROGRAM AIMS TO REFORM HOMEGROWN ISIS RECRUITS BACK INTO NORMAL YOUNG AMERICANS A controversial new program aims to reform homegrown ISIS recruits back into normal young americans.

Like most high school seniors, Abdullahi Yusuf tried to avoid hugging his father in view of other teens. But on the morning of May 28, 2014, as he was being dropped off in front of Heritage Academy in southeast Minneapolis, the rail-thin 18-year-old, who went by the nickname Bones, startled his dad with a tender good-bye embrace. Unbeknownst to his father, Yusuf believed he’d never see any member of his family again.

Yusuf snuck out of school after first period and walked two blocks to Dar al-Farooq Como, a plain brick mosque on 17th Avenue. A friend picked him up in a Volkswagen Jetta and took him to a light-rail station. There Yusuf caught a train to the airport: He was set to depart for Turkey that afternoon, with layovers in New York and Moscow. Once he touched down in Istanbul, he planned to head to the city’s famed Blue Mosque and use his iPhone’s MagicJack app to call a phone number that he’d been given by another friend, Abdirahman Daud. Yusuf didn’t know who would answer, but Daud had assured him this person would guide him into Syria and help him become a soldier for the so-called Islamic State, better known in the West as ISIS.

“I never committed no terrorist crimes that you’re accusing me of,” Yusuf snapped. But his outward bravado masked feelings of panic.

Yusuf was moments away from boarding his flight when he was pulled aside by FBI special agent John Thomas. The agent was part of a surveillance team that had been watching Yusuf for a month, ever since the teen had shown up at the Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis to apply for an expedited passport. During his interview with the passport examiner, Yusuf hadn’t been able to name the hotel where he’d supposedly booked a room or the Istanbul tourist attractions he wished to visit beyond the Blue Mosque. The examiner had reported this fishy behavior to his boss, who had in turn alerted the FBI.

When Agent Thomas told Yusuf that he knew all about his travel plans, the teen reeled off the talking points he’d rehearsed in case he was stopped: He swore he was merely going on vacation and protested that the agent was targeting him because of his Somali heritage and Muslim faith. “I never committed no terrorist crimes that you’re accusing me of,” he snapped. But his outward bravado masked feelings of panic.

Thomas informed Yusuf there was no chance he’d be allowed to fly, so the teen took a taxi home. His mom and dad were waiting for him there: Other FBI agents had just come by to let them know of their son’s attempt to leave the country. Amidst all this, Yusuf managed to post a cryptic note on Twitter: “the weather is hot today.” The phrase was a signal to Daud and the other members of Yusuf’s circle of aspiring jihadis that the law was closing in.

Several months passed with no further word from the FBI, and Yusuf tried to move on with his life: He attended summer school, found a part-time job at Best Buy, and played paintball with his friends. In September, Yusuf’s lawyer sent him an alarming text: Yusuf’s arrest was imminent. He flirted with the notion of fleeing the country but ultimately decided to stay put. When a police car finally pulled him over one late November day, the teenager went quietly.

Yusuf and five of his friends, all young Somali Americans from Minneapolis who’d schemed to fight in Syria, eventually pleaded guilty to trying to join the Islamic State. Yusuf and one of his codefendants, Abdirizak Warsame, went even further, agreeing to testify and help convict Daud and two other members of the group whom the government characterized as the conspiracy’s leaders. (Two additional members actually made it to Syria and were killed fighting for ISIS.) No matter their level of contrition or cooperation, however, the six men who took plea bargains each faced up to 15 years in prison—a standard sentence for an American found guilty of aiding the Islamic State.

But Michael J. Davis, the federal judge who presided over the Minneapolis terrorism cases, was troubled. Some of the defendants appeared to be malleable youths who’d been ensnared by sly recruiting tactics. Yusuf, for example, was first lured into the group during pickup basketball at a mosque. After the games, the men would spend hours watching a YouTube channel called Enter the Truth. The videos, all slick Islamic State productions, focused on the suffering of Syrian children and the moral corruption of the West. Soon enough, Yusuf was wondering whether he should join the group in going to Syria.

As he fielded guilty pleas throughout 2015, Davis thought about how he might offer leniency to the conspiracy’s least culpable members. He could do so only if he knew for sure that the men would never again be tempted by jihadism. To that end, Davis began to research whether there are effective therapies for reforming extremists. He hoped to find a credible way to transform Yusuf and his friends back into the ordinary young men they’d once been. This could spare the youths years behind bars—an act of compassion that would undermine the Islamic State narrative that the West despises its Muslim citizens.

Davis discovered that numerous nations, from Denmark to Indonesia, have developed methods for nudging young men and women back from the extremist brink—a process known as deradicalization. The judge became intent on starting the first laboratory for deradicalization in the US; he just needed to find an expert he could trust, someone with a proven track record of liberating young minds from violent extremism. One name kept coming up—that of 30-year-old researcher Daniel Koeh­ler.