Tonight, three teenagers from colorado are back in their homes in colorado after apparently trying to travel to syria to join the Islamic State in syria. Officials say its an example of the system working. Parents realizing that their daughters were missing and sounding the alarm in time for authorities to stop the girls enroute. Heres nbcs justice correspondent pete williams. Reporter its the kind of thing u. S. Officials have been fearing since isis began an outpouring of propaganda in english. U. S. And German Authorities say an apparent plan by three American Teenage girls to get to syria ended here at the Frankfurt Airport over the weekend. Tipped off by the parents, german Airport Security stopped the girls and told they were wanted back home. Officials say the three left friday on a flight from denver through chicago, then frankfurt with tickets to fly on to istanbul and turkey. U. S. Officials say they believe the girls intended to go from there to syria and join up with jihadists, perhaps isis, perhaps other groups. Arrests for people in the u. S. Trying to help terrorists are three times higher than they were a year ago. Eric holder said a huge concern is people in the u. S. Violating t via the internet. They get activated and decide as lone wolives to take action. Thats what keeps me up at night. Two of the of the girls are sister, ages 15 and 16 and are of somalia descent and the other is sudanese descent. The Islamic State reportedly has two all female brigades in a policing role, making sure civilian women are in compliance with the Islamic States strict rules. Joining me now is nbc news terrorism analyst. He spent more than a decade tracking al qaeda and other terrorist organizations and Zack Beauchamp who has recently reported about women in the Islamic State. Zack, youre ahead of the news anyway on this kind of story. What are the details in this story and a half stand out to you. I think its the fact that these women maybe girl, lets say. It sounded like they were high school age, found that by finding isis propaganda online and going out and deciding to join the group. The fact that after reading about the group they decided this is something we want to be a part of indicates isis having some success tapping into discontent among younger werners and americans a their lives right now turn into a ro manhattan, radical cause. I want to read a portion of the kro police report. Its a runaway, the case that i ear talking about here. And this is before they know where these girls are. And it says the father stated his two daughters were claiming they were sick this morning and did not go to school. At approximately 10 30, the two told them they were going to the library. He was at work at the time. When he returned home this evening, they were still not home. One of his daughters friends parents came over after he got home and told him his daughter was missing and she had taken her passport and told the father that he needed to check for his daughters passports as well. The father stated that he checked and found that his daughters passports were missing along with 2,000 in cash. He has tried calling the daughters cell phones but she does not answer. Neither girl is homicidal or suicidal. Neither is on medication. Its unknown what clothes they wear, but they both wear head scarves as part of their religion. Edmund coleman, so here are these kids, who did something maybe all of us have done. I certainly did. I claimed to be too sick to go to school one day, and it wasnt true. But in this case, they really had Something Else planned. Yeah. And you have to wonder whether there were any other warning signs. Its sad parents only realized at this point. I think it emphasized the issue here, that these people, these girms are not being prad callized by a imam or a mosque or some radical saudifunded center. Theyre being radicalized by what theyre reading on the internet. It is kind of incumbent upon parents to make sure they understand what their kids are looking at. And theyre kids. They are kids, and theyre getting the idea that there is some grand adventure for them out there. That they can become superheroes and celebrities and they can right the wrongs of the universe by going out and joining these guys. It sounds great. Its a great sale, its a great advertisement. But once they get there, the realcy is not like that. There are two austrian girls in their teens who went there to go join isis. They sent letters back to their parents and said well never come home, were here forever. Isis is the best. Well, that didnt last for very long. The latest reports we got is that these two girls are desperate to come home, and the sad part is that its really not available to them. Theyve had their passports cancelled. If they try to get a flight back to austria, theyll most likely be arrested. Its a problematic issue what to do with these girls, especially the ones who go there and realize this is madness. Theres another page in the police report, when the girls come home eventually, as they did, the police come to their homes, and this is the report filed then, they arrived in germany and stayed at the airport for an entire day. They said that some sort of police fort in the german airport detained them and put them on a plane back to denver. Once again, they were detained by the fbi and were eventually leased. I asked them why they went to germany and they said family and would not elaborate on any other details about their trip. Now, that might shock a lot of people, zach, that the fbi questioned these girls for a little bit and then sent them home. I think that points to a key point of resilience in the american resistant system to people who go abroad and want to join a group like isis. America is a place thats hard to get to. A lot of people worry these girls are going to go away, come back and plan a terrorist attack here. The truth sits really easy to track people who have gone to join isis. Theyre home right now, they dont have the knowhow to build a bomb or do anything like that if theyre under parental supervision and the fbi is watching them. In case, the system worked and it probably will in most cases. I want to go back to what happened about these kids who go over there dreaming about abcertain idealistic situation. They discover as kids will and many of us will in many situations arent as good as they might be. They might want to change their minds and come back. When we start revoking passports and make it more difficult for them to come back, are we making a bad situation worse . Look, its a risk that we face. Its a very difficult problem. Because of the fact that we know that a high proportion of those who are going to syria, fighter, foreign fighters, males, females alike, these are folks that have dangerous intentions and would like to carry out violence potentially here in the united states. On the other hand, there has to be some form of deradicalization. We have to try to deradicalize people. In the case of another young woman in colorado arrested trying to join isis, again through turkey, the fbi tried repeatedly to interview her and kind of tell her, we know what youre doing. You have to stop this or you will go to jail. The fortunate part about ms. Conley is that despite being repeatedly interviewed by the fbi and warned what the consequences will be, she said i dont care, im still going there. And she did. The fbi just stopped her on the plane in denver. Its that kind of mentality that were dealing with. Thats really the challenge. Zach, theres an interesting piece reporting in denmark, they are basically just welcoming former jihadi fighters back into denmark on the theory that if theyre coming back, if theyre tired of the fight or if theyre coming back, we want to make them like living here better than what they were just doing. We want to kind of debrainwash them. Its an interesting approach. I think that it depends on each individual case whether or not you think its going to work, right . Some people decide that they want to do this for an adventure, and some people become ideologically convinced i need to help tear down the Building Blocks of the west. You have to figure it out. You have to manage these things on a case by case basis. We have a case here in the colorado kids were talking about tonight where the parents surely should have done a better job of getting a sense of what was going through their minds in this area, but then once their girls were missing, i got to say, they responded quickly and smartly. Yeah, they responded like responsible parents. Thats what we expect of theme. If you have a child who you think is in trouble and is potentially going to get themselves in a homicidal situation in a foreign country, its not only your responsibility to your child, its your responsibility to this country to make sure that you intervene. I mean, a lot of these cases could be stopped if parents were more proactive about making sure that kids understand what the consequences are. And not to simply treat this kind of behavior as oh, its just a phase. If your child is browsing suicide bombing videos on their computer, if theyre watching beheadings and theyre laughing about it. These are things to take seriously. Its not a joke. I wish it was. But there are a lot of these kids who are headed over there, again, both male and female. And these are the only warning signs there really are. And zach, lets assume for the moment that the parents are very unlikely to catch them watchi ining beheading videos oe video, but at the dber table talking about their believes, their values, and talking about these news issues. Exactly about what the Islamic State is doing. You would think that if they were having freer conversations about that at the dinner table, they might pick up some threatening things, some scary things possibly going through their daughters minds. Its possible they could. On the other hand, sometimes its difficult to distinguish between the isis radicalization and the way in which young people often embrace radical ideas at that point as a form of rebellion or a form of developing a more authentic identity, something that, you know, seems to them like its important. And parents are often very bad judges of how far kids are going to take that. Its difficult to say that theres any one individual parent who you can blame or say is doing the wrong thing or the right thing in these cases or even that theres a blueprint for how you figure out whether your kid is going to join isis. Its not a thing to be paranoid about. It part of being a good parent is understanding when your kid is acting out and when your kid is at serious risk and needs serious help from authorities. Thats a judgment call each individual parent is going to have to make. That said its not worth getting paranoid. Thank you both very much for joining us tonight. Coming up, were going to have a malala yousefs reaction. Theres a few senate races all of this could come down to. When were counting the votes on election night, it might all come down to kansas. Thats most dramatic scenario we could see. Steve kornacki is here to tell us how we might get to that scenario. And he will be at the big election board with all the states to figure out. And there is now, you should know this, an entire industry working on trying to help people spy on you, people who are already very close to you like, say, someone youre living with. Maybe a spouse whos interested in exactly why you were a little late coming home tonight. There are apps that are being designed specifically for spouses to track their spouses. Thats coming up. What do i do . You need to catch the 4 10 huh . The Equipment Tracking system will get you to the loading dock. There should be a truck leaving now. I got it. Now jump off the bridge. What . In 3. 2. 1. Are you kidding me . Go. Right on time. Right now, over 20,000 trains are running reliably. We call that predictable. Thrillingly predictable. Theres confidence. Then theres trusting your vehicle maintenance to ford service confidence. Our expertise, technology, and high quality parts means your peace of mind. 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I never call them the right name. I call barack bo. It never works out really well. In kentucky, president bill clinton claimed for the third time with Alison Lundergran grimes. And on saturday saturday, Elizabeth Warren will travel to New Hampshire to campaign once again against her old opponent scott brown. Nbcs chuck todd moderated the debate between scott brown and senator gene shaheen in New Hampshire tonight. You had two chances to run for the u. S. Senate in massachusetts in 2013 and 2014. Why not take those . Because i live here. I mean, i live here. I was born at the port portsmi shipyard. He didnt move to New Hampshire and say i want to get involved in the state. He thought about running for senate again in massachusetts, then governor in massachusetts. Then he went to iowa and said he was thinking about running for president. I dont think New Hampshire is a consolation prize. I think we need a senator [ applause ] i am joined now by msnbcs Steve Kornacki at the big election board over there in our senate races. And steve, the most dramatic outcome im hoping for, the most dramatic, is that the control of the senate all comes down to the election in kansas where an independent is running and the one thing he refuses to answer is who he will vote for for majority leader. So if we get 50 elected republicans in the senate, 49 elected on the democratic side, orman is the independent that would make 50 on the democratic side. Joe biden would then make 51 in the votes for majority leader if orman becomes the 51st republican, then republicans control the senate. How do we get to the giant pressure of the great orman moment . Of course, the west wing writers are looking for a dramatic pop. So lets look for it. Lets take a look at the big board here. You can see it right in the middle of your screen there, kansas, a color that nobody thought it would be this time of year, the end of october. Yellow is undecided. Yellow being one of the Battle Ground states. There are 11 of them on the map. Which is big for this time of year. Usually its narrower at this point. 11 up for grabs right now. Were starting the democrats at 43, but thats a big misleading. Youve got these two independents. Maips angus keane and vermonts bernie sanders. So theyre really starting at 45. Republicans at 44. Two different numbers here. What were going to try to do to get to that kansas scenario is narrow the battleground a little bit. I looked at the polling average in these battleground states. This is not one random poll. If we have one, it could be an outliar, it could be an error, mistakes, margin of error. The average of all polls is a lot more significant when somebody is ahead. So heres a perfect example. Were going to start up in New Hampshire. You had the example, jean shaheen and scott brown. The average poll puts her three points ahead of scott brown. Scott brown may still win New Hampshire, but for our purposes right now, were going to assign New Hampshire to the democrats. Were going to make it blue. Theyre up to 46. Kay hagan, a steady lead in the average of the polls. Paint it blue. Now participant some states red. Kentucky, Mitch Mcconnell, is four to five points ahead of the average over alison grimes. Were going to make that red. Arkans arkansas, mark pryor is in a world of trouble in ar akansas. Were going to paint that red. Louisiana, as you might expect, its a funky state. They have a very different way of doing elections down there. But the bottom line in louisiana right now, is that mary landrieu, the incumbent democrat, conventional wisdom is she has a tougher road than the republican she faces. South dakota, one of the most volatile states on the map right now because you have an independent candidate, former republican senator, now running as an independent, getting over 20 in the polls. Hes run out there. Were looking for some new polling on this. For right now, the republican candidate, former governor mike brown continues to lead in the averages. That takes us out to alaska. Mark begich losing