Washington: An Alabama woman who joined the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria won’t be allowed to return to the United States with her toddler son because she is not an American citizen, the administration said Wednesday. Her lawyer is challenging that claim.
In a brief statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave no details as to how the administration made their determination.
“Ms Hoda Muthana is not a US citizen and will not be admitted into the United States,” Pompeo said. “She does not have any legal basis, no valid US passport, no right to a passport nor any visa to travel to the United States.”
But Hassan Shibly, lawyer for the woman, insisted Muthana was born in the United States and had a valid passport before she joined the IS in 2014. He says she has renounced the terrorist group and wants to come home to protect her 18-month-old son regardless of the legal consequences.
“She’s an American. Americans break the law,” said Shibly, a lawyer with the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “When people break the law, we have a legal system to handle those kinds of situations to hold people accountable, and that’s all she’s asking for.”
Muthana and her son are now in a refugee camp in Syria, along with others who fled the remnants of the Islamic State.
Shibly said that the administration argues that she didn’t qualify for citizenship because her father was a Yemeni diplomat. But the lawyer asserted that Muthana’s father did not have diplomatic status at the time of her birth in Hackensack, New Jersey.
He released a copy of the woman’s birth certificate, issued two months after her birth, October 28, 1994, to support his claim.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday on Twitter that he was behind the decision to deny her entry. “I have instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he fully agrees, not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!” the US President wrote on his Twitter handle.
The announcement came a day after Britain said that it was stripping the citizenship of Shamima Begum, a 19-year-old who left the country in 2015 with two friends to join the IS and recently gave birth in a refugee camp.
It also comes as the US has urged allies to back citizens who joined IS but are now in the custody of the American-backed forces fighting the remnants of the brutally extremist group that once controlled a vast area spanning parts of Syria and Iraq.
Most people born in the United States are accorded so-called birthright citizenship, but there are exceptions. However, Muthana’s case is unusual, if not unprecedented in that she once held a US passport. Passports are only issued to citizens by birth or naturalisation, according to Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the ‘Programme on Extremism’ at George Washington University.
Hughes said the decision is also unusual because it comes just days after the Trump administration urged European nations to repatriate extremists from Syria as the Islamic State nears collapse.
AFP
