Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has warned the Albanese government would face legal hurdles to block 13 Australian men suspected of being ISIS fighters from returning if they are released from an Iraqi jail.

The Labor frontbencher vowed Australia wouldn’t help the group amid reports they could be preparing to return from a Baghdad prison amid fresh interrogation.

In a string of media appearances on Monday, however, Mr Burke highlighted that the “really tough” threshold of placing a temporary exclusion order on such people was legally challenging.

While he vowed to go to the “limits of what we’re legally able to do” but referenced the difficulty in banning the last ISIS-linked Australian woman in Syria, Hodan Abby, despite significant evidence against her.

“It’s a really tough threshold to meet legally,” Mr Burke said.

“I’ve only had one time when the Department said that the threshold was met, and I was able to put an exclusion order in, I did that straight away.

“If I get that legal option, I take it.”

It comes as a new ABC report on Monday claimed Ms Abby, who was subject to a temporary exclusion order, was an enforcer of Sharia law in a Syrian camp.

The 29-year-old Western Sydney woman also allegedly enslaved a Yazidi woman who was only nine or 10 when she was sold to the Australian woman’s family.

Mr Burke said he expected Ms Abby wouldn’t return to Australia because she would be “very mindful of consequences” of her actions in Syria and how they will be treated by Australian law enforcement.

When discussing the 13 men, Mr Burke insisted that if AFP had enough evidence the group would be charged, “locked up” and faced heavy surveillance.

“Everybody who went to join ISIS made an unconscionable decision, like made a horrific decision,” Mr Burke told ABC.

“And while they were there, there were a range of unacceptable behaviours across the cohort.”

“Some people are at levels that it just beggars belief how humans could treat other humans that way.”

The Australian newspaper last week reported that the group have been interviewed in prison by US officials and jail staff to determine their level of involvement with ISIS.

Shadow Home Affairs Minister Jonathan Duniam said Australia “should not even be contemplating” the return of the men who clearly wanted to see the “downfall of western civilization”.

He said labelled them “not friends of Australia” because they “went and chose to participate” in the ISIS caliphate as far back as 2014.

Ms Abby and her nine-year-old daughter had travelled to a Syrian airport with the most recent group to return in May but were denied access to the flight due to the TEO.

However, the order which had previously blocked her from re-entering the country on national security grounds expired in June when she was issued with a return permit.

Mr Burke insisted the issuing of the permit had been legally out of this hands but vowed if she did return there would be significant surveillance and extreme communication restrictions.

It would include requiring her to provide 24 hours’ notice to the department before using any form of technology, including phones, email, social media, or the internet.

Ms Abby had left her Australian home with a friend at age 18 and travelled to Syria in 2015 after telling their families they were going on holiday.

It’s understood she had been living in a detention camp in northern Syria for several years alongside other women who had actively petitioned the Australian Government for repatriation since 2019.

Her child, who is not subject to the exclusion order, suffers from significant disabilities caused by shrapnel wounds she sustained in Syria as a baby.