EXCLUSIVE: The parents of slain American aid worker Kayla Mueller, Carl and Marsha Mueller, have written an emotional open letter to President Donald Trump, asking him to use his upcoming meeting with Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, to bring home their daughter’s remains, a decade after she was killed by ISIS.
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American Kayla Mueller, 26, was killed while in the hands of ISIS, her family said Tuesday.
“Ten long years have passed since our daughter’s body found its resting place, unnoticed and unknown, somewhere in the crimson folds of the Syrian hills,” the Muellers wrote. “Kayla’s body has not been returned to us; her story remains incomplete.
I remember Kayla
Kayla Mueller was a 26-year-old humanitarian aid worker from Arizona who was kidnapped by ISIS in 2013 while helping Syrian refugees near the Turkish border. She was enslaved by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who allegedly abused and murdered her in 2015. Her body was never found.
The family’s letter tells how Operation Kayla Mueller – ordered by President Trump – led to the death of al-Baghdadi in northern Syria in 2019. Standing with Trump at the 2020 Republican National Convention, the Muellers credited him with “delivering the iron fist of justice against unspeakable evil.”
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Arizona Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh with Kayla Mueller’s parents on January 3, 2025. (Kayla Mueller family)
With Assad ousted and Syria now under an interim government, the Muellers say the political landscape has changed dramatically. They praised growing regional cooperation to locate missing Americans and quoted Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., who has personally visited Damascus to advocate for her return.
“The Assad regime has fallen and with new leadership comes new opportunities to write the final chapter on the Americans still missing in Syria,” the Muellers wrote. “We believe that because of your leadership, the torch that Kayla was forced to abandon has been resurrected.”
Mueller in the short video. (Mueller family/ABC News)
The Muellers described Trump’s meeting with al-Sharaa as a defining moment — both for U.S. foreign policy and for their family’s decade-long quest for closure.
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They concluded the letter with a plea: ‘Your meeting will surely spark real hope in the war-torn streets of Syria. Bringing Kayla’s body home will do the same for every American heart, and together we will close the era of terror rule in Syria and finally bring an end to Kayla’s story. This is a moment to reaffirm America’s resolve: that we will never abandon our own. One more push could bring Kayla home.”
