ISIS bride has to live like a refugee
Citizen claim nixed, so Ala. student can’t return
WASHINGTON — A federal judge Monday declined to fast-track a lawsuit brought by the family of an American-born woman from Alabama who alleges the Trump administration unlawfully denied her return to the country after she joined the Islamic State in Syria.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton of Washington rejected an emergency motion to recognize the U.S. citizenship claim of Hoda Muthana, saying her family’s attorneys had not proved she would be “irreparably harmed” by remaining in a refugee camp with her 18month-old son while litigation continued at a normal pace.
Muthana’s father brought the case, and Walton indicated he would rule on her citizenship claim in litigation that lawyers said could be completed by summer.
Muthana, now 24, left her life as a University of Alabama student to go to Syria in 2014. She eventually married three Islamic State fighters in the country, having a child with her second husband, who was killed in battle. In December, she escaped from the dwindling territory held by the militant group and surrendered to Kurdish forces.
“Today we’re disappointed but understand the judge’s ruling ... focusing on whether there’s immediate harm,” lead Muthana attorney Charles Swift of the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America said after the 90-minute hearing Monday.
“In the meantime, we’re also very encouraged. The judge’s comments certainly foreshadow the ultimate outcome of this case in our viewpoint ... the fact that Hoda Muthana is a United States citizen,” Swift said.
Justice Department attorneys argued that even though Muthana was born in the United States, her father was a diplomat from Yemen at the United Nations at the time, and children born to diplomats do not acquire U.S. citizenship at birth.
“Muthana is not and has never been a U.S. citizen, and her son likewise is not a U.S. citizen. Settled law applied to the relevant events clearly demonstrates that plaintiff enjoyed diplomatic-agentlevel-immunity until Feb. 6, 1995 — after Muthana’s birth,” wrote Joseph Carilli, a Justice Department immigration litigation trial attorney.
The case of the “ISIS bride” centers on a determination on when Muthana’s father, Ahmed Ali Muthana, stopped being classified as a diplomat accredited to the Yemeni mission to the United Nations in New York.
Ahmed Ali Muthana said Yemen terminated his diplomatic posting before her birth but did not notify the U.S. government of that fact until after she was born.
While she was living in the self-declared caliphate in Syria, Hoda Muthana helped spread Islamic State propaganda on social media and called for the death of Americans.
“This is a woman who went online and tried to kill young men and women of the United States of America,” Secretary of State Pompeo said in a radio interview Monday.
In an interview last month with the Guardian newspaper, Muthana described herself as having been “brainwashed.” She said she regrets her decision and wants to return home so her son can grow up as an American citizen.
“I look back now, and I think I was very arrogant,” she said. “Now I’m worried about my son’s future.”