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They began talking about making a run for it, and they said they shared their growing horror over the choices they had made.

“It’s hard to change your mind-set when you have lost everything and sacrificed everything. Even if you feel a tug that tells you something’s not right here, this isn’t O.K., and that there’s too many holes here, something’s wrong, I think it’s very, very difficult when you feel like you have burned bridges, to know how to shift,” Ms. Polman said.

ISIS forbade anyone to leave, planting land mines and using snipers to shoot down anyone who tried. But last month, Ms. Muthana said, she decided to give it a try by latching on to a Syrian family who left Shafa at dusk.

All she took was her baby and his stroller, she said. When darkness fell, the group got lost and spent the night in the frigid cold, she said.

The next day, Jan. 10, she completed the journey and surrendered to American troops in the Syrian desert, who fingerprinted her.

Days later, Ms. Polman followed the same route and surrendered as well. Weeks later, after having no contact from the American or Canadian authorities, she and Ms. Muthana reached out to the Red Cross to get help. They are also in touch with a lawyer who is trying to help navigate their return to North America.

Ms. Muthana gave a handwritten note to the lawyer.

“I realized how I didn’t appreciate or maybe even really understand how important the freedoms that we have in America are. I do now,” she wrote. “To say that I regret my past words, any pain that I caused my family and any concerns I would cause my country would be hard for me to really express properly.”

Mr. Hughes, the deputy director of the George Washington University Program on Extremism, said the United States had an obligation to bring her home — “albeit in handcuffs.”