Trump bars US-born woman who joined IS from returning
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said Wednesday he is barring a US-born former Islamic State propagandist from returning home, making the highly unusual case that she is not a US citizen.
Trump’s refusal to admit 24year- old Hoda Muthana comes just as he is pressing Europeans to repatriate their own Islamic State fighters and will likely face legal challenges, with US citizenship extremely difficult to lose.
Trump said on Twitter he has ‘ instructed’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ‘not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the country’ – a break with usual US protocol not to comment on individuals’ immigration issues.
“Ms Hoda Muthana is not a US citizen and will not be admitted into the United States,” Pompeo said in a terse statement.
“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,” he added.
The US generally grants citizenship to everyone born on its soil and the Alabamaraised Muthana is believed to have travelled to Syria on a US passport.
But a US official said a later investigation showed that she had not been entitled to her passport, adding: “Ms Muthana’s citizenship has not been revoked because she was never a citizen.”
Officials declined further comment but in a loophole that could boost the government case, Muthana’s father had been a diplomat from Yemen – and children of diplomats are not automatically given citizenship.
Muthana’s lawyer, Hassan Shilby, showed a birth certificate that demonstrated she was born in New Jersey in 1994 and said her father had ceased being a diplomat ‘months and months’ before her birth.
“She is a US citizen. She had a valid passport. She may have broken the law and, if she has, she’s willing to pay the price,” Shilby told AFP at his office in Tampa.
He said Muthana wanted due process and was willing to go to prison if convicted.
“We cannot get to a point where we simply strip citizenship from those who break the law. That’s not what America is about. We have one of the greatest legal systems in the world, and we have to abide by it.”
Just this weekend, Trump took to Twitter to chastise European allies that have not taken back hundreds of Islamic State prisoners caught in Syria, where Trump plans to withdraw US troops.
Comparatively few Americans have embraced radical Islam, with the Counter Extremism Project at George Washington University identifying 64 who went to join the Islamic State group in Syria or Iraq.
Muthana, raised in a strict household in Hoover, Alabama, said she was brainwashed by social media messages and headed to Syria without her parents’ knowledge in 2014. — AFP