(RepublicanWire.org) – An Alabama woman who fled to join the Islamic State terrorist group is begging to come home to the United States after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected her appeal request several months ago. Her citizenship status has been questioned, resulting in her being unable to be legally admitted back into the country.
In an interview from a detention camp in Syria where she’s being held by U.S.-allied Kurdish forces, Hoda Muthana claims she was brainwashed by online traffickers into joining the group in 2014.
“I’ve always said if I need to sit in prison, and do my time, I will do it. I as well am a victim of ISIS. I’m hoping my government looks at me as someone young at the time and naive,” she said.
“Muthana’s parents immigrated from Yemen and she was born in New Jersey, but raised in Alabama. She left home when she was twenty years old to unite with ISIS. She grew up in a conservative Muslim home and told her family she was going on a trip with her school, but instead traveled to Turkey and went to Syria. The only option to get out was to marry an ISIS fighter, and she married three of them and had her son. The first two men died during combat and she reportedly said she got a divorce from the third man,” the Daily Wire reported.
“In early 2019, she ran away from one of the enclaves in Syria and went to another prison camp. In the past, however, she posted favorably about ISIS on social media. She now has said in a recent interview that her phone was confiscated and Islamic State backers posted the tweets. In 2016, the Obama administration revoked her citizenship, stating her father was a diplomat when Muthana was born, which her lawyers have argued against. In 2019, a federal judge ruled that she is not a citizen of the United States, and the Supreme Court did not take up her appeal last January,” the outlet added.
Months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider Muthana’s appeal to allow her to return to the U.S. She’s been living in a Syrian refugee camp since 2019.
“While she was overseas the government determined she was not a U.S. citizen and revoked her passport, citing her father’s status as a diplomat at the time of her birth. Her family sued to enable her return to the United States,” the Associated Press reported.
“A federal judge ruled in 2019 that the U.S. government correctly determined Muthana wasn’t a U.S. citizen despite her birth in the country. Children of diplomats aren’t entitled to birthright citizenship. The family’s lawyers appealed, arguing that her father’s status as a diplomat assigned to the U.N. had ended before her birth, making her automatically a citizen,” the outlet added.
“Muthana surrendered to U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces as Islamic State fighters were losing the last of their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria and going to refugee camps. Muthana said she regretted her decision to join the group and wanted to return to the U.S. with her toddler child, the son of a man she met while living with the group. The man later died,” the AP report continued.
Muthana’s case gained widespread attention as former President Donald Trump tweeted about it, saying he had directed the secretary of state not to allow her back into the country.
“I have instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he fully agrees, not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!” Trump wrote on Twitter back in 2019.
At the time, Pompeo said Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the country.
“She does not have any legal basis, no valid U.S. passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the United States,” Pompeo said, adding: “We continue to strongly advise all U.S. citizens not to travel to Syria.”
Hassan Shibly, a family representative for Muthana, disputed Pompeo’s assertion at the time, saying that Muthana was born in New Jersey.
“The Trump administration continues its attempts to wrongfully strip citizens of their citizenship,” Shibly said. “Hoda Muthana had a valid US passport and is a citizen. She was born in Hackensack, NJ in October 1994, months after her father stopped being a diplomat.”
