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ISIS Mother Pleads to Return—to Alabama
We knew this would happen. All the men and women who were excited about fighting for ISIS wanted to be involved with the ISIS cause and they went to fight in Syria. And now one of them wants to come home with her child. 
Hoda Muthana went to Syria in 2014; she was one of 1,500 foreign women and the only American staying in a Kurdish-run refugee camp. She was married three times and widowed twice. And now she has an 18-month old son. She is asking to return to the United States.
Her attorney claims she was brainwashed by ISIS. She wanted to “spill American blood”; she was known online as a prominent spokesperson for ISIS. Now she says that joining ISIS “was a big mistake.”
She told The Guardian that her parents were very conservative and limited her freedom in Alabama. She claims that contributed to her radicalization.
In a letter obtained by ABC News, these were the words she wrote:
Being where I was and seeing the ppl [sic] around me scared me because I realized I didn’t want to be a part of this. My beliefs weren’t the same as theirs. In my quiet moments, in between bombings, starvation, cold and fear I would look at my beautiful little boy and know that I didn’t belong here and neither did he. I would think sometimes of my family, my friends and the life that I knew and I realized how I didn’t appreciate or maybe even really understand how important the freedoms that we have in America are. I do now. To say that I regret my past words, any pain that I caused my family and any concerns I would cause my country would be hard for me to really express properly.
I think her choices were unwise and irresponsible. She has now put her own life and that of her child’s potentially in danger from Islamist radicals. We don’t know if she has outgrown her brainwashing. Would we be safe if we admitted her to the U.S.? What about her child?
My heart goes out to her and I say no. You can’t return.
Published in Islamist Terrorism
Boom. Just out
An Alabama woman who left home to join the Islamic State group in Syria is not a U.S. citizen and will not be allowed to return to the United States, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday.
In a brief statement that gave no details as to how the determination was reached, Pompeo said Muthana, who says she made a mistake in joining the group and now wants to return with her 18-month-old son, has no “legal basis” to claim American citizenship.
“Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States,” Pompeo said. “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.”
The plot clots. She is the daughter of a Yemeni diplomat, and she was born in the US. Children of foreign diplomats are not considered under “US jurisdiction” (ergo: diplomatic immunity), and are therefore not considered US citizens, according to the State Department. They can apply for and be granted, citizenship, but that is a process they have to apply for.
I don’t know who her mother is, and I don’t know anything about this passport she allegedly claims she has, but I have to assume that Mike Pompeo has some firm basis for his statement when he says she has “no right to a passport, or any visa to travel to the United States.”
Copy-pasted from Twitter:
BREAKING US State Department says Hoda Mothana is not a US citizen, and will not be admitted to the United States Her father was a Yemeni diplomat at the United Nations when she was born in the US.
Edit: Sorry for the repeat. I hadn’t refreshed my browser.
Unless his dad is an American, then no he isn’t
From ABC News emphasis added.
This sort of supports my point. Being a dumb kid who married a jihadi and traveled to Syria isn’t necessarily a crime. What did she do there? Did she take up arms against the US and its allies? Did she participate in war crimes? Or did she just move to a shithole place with a shithole man and have his babies and try to survive? I don’t know the answer to these questions but they matter in terms of determining how she should be treated.
Of course she should be treated with the utmost suspicion. She should not be readmitted without answers. And she certainly shouldn’t get taxpayer funded therapy. But there is more to the story than we know and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions until we know.
Britian is a signatory to the conventions regarding Stateless Persons (1954 and 1961, 1966) I wonder what is in this woman’s biography that they can do this?
Noting also that the US is not a party to the various UN conventions on Statelessness.
Hopefully he’s better informed about the details than the peanut gallery here on Ricochet.
All I need to know is if she was a US citizen before she went. The State Department says she wasn’t.
Good enough for me. She can exercise her citizenship somewhere else.
Not according to the facts at present.
No one suggested she is an enemy combatant.
That does not mean that she isn’t an enemy of the US. (Of course this is moot at this point; she is no longer a US person and has no – ahem – right of return).
Sounds like she never was a US citizen, so case closed, in my book. But if she is by some means a US citizen she probably owes some back taxes. Better try some other country.
Very happy to hear neither she or her baby are citizens of the United States. Send them both back to Yemen.
She is fortunate to be in a Syrian refugee camp. Had she been in Iraq, things could be much much different.
From the Guardian dated 22 May 2018
The Guardian doesn’t tell us what became of her, however the Express (UK) notes that she was given life imprisonment.
Further noting a diet plan potentially worth billions
Although she must be a millennial, because she thought she could dictate terms of her imprisonment.
Life’s too good for her.
I haven’t seen any news reports that asked any questions about the basis of her claim to US citizenship. One would like to think that at least one reporter might have thought to look into it before now.
Also from the report:
Oh, you’d better believe this one’s going to court.
My first reaction is to disagree with the OP, which said “My heart goes out to her and I say no.” My heart does not go out to her. I’m prepared to forgive many youthful indiscretions, but joining ISIS (a terrorist quasi-state at war with the US) and wanting to “spill American blood” is beyond the pale.
My next reaction is to agree that Pompeo’s announcement resolves the issue. She is not a citizen, and neither is the child.
My third reaction is that if she had been a citizen, it strikes me that 8 USC 1481(a)(7) (here) would likely apply, as it provides for loss of nationality (which includes citizenship) for: “committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18, or violating section 2384 of title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.”
Note that this is only effective on conviction. There are other sections of the statute that might apply.
Please review comment #55.
Reportedly she may have Bangladeshi citizenship. However, it’s hard to tell for sure from information online because there are two different women named Shamima Begum who left Britain to join ISIS.
My mistake.
She isn’t worth sending to Gitmo. Although I do understand Cuba has wonderful childcare.
Except, if the family attorney is correct, you cannot remove birthright citizenship like that.
In that event, I’m willing to spot her life imprisonment.
On the “fake news” front, here are some news outlets who are referring to this Yemeni woman who traveled to Syria to join Isis as an “Alabama woman” or an “Alabama mother.” Note that her child was not born in Alabama, either.
There are others, but I think that you get the point.
It’s interesting to note how consistent they are with Al Jazeera (here): “Pompeo says Alabama woman who joined ISIL can’t return to US.”
I am a bit disappointed even in FoxNews (here):
I admit that the disappointment is tempered by the insertion of “ISIS” in the middle of “Alabama wife,” and by the rest of the sentence.
Fake news is the enemy of the people.
Nothing like a fake headline to stir outrage.
I don’t think that there has to be evidence of bearing arms in order to qualify as an enemy combatant. My impression is that joining the organization, and/or otherwise giving it aid and comfort, is sufficient. Here’s a summary of US laws and regulations.
So if I get the story straight, she was born in the US (if you consider New Jersey the US…am I right?) but here father came as a diplomat from Yemen so the children of diplomats don’t get birthright citizenship, but actually before she was born her father was dismissed from his diplomatic post by Yemen. So when she was born he wasn’t a diplomat. Still she has been living in the US presumably since then at some point her family settled in Alabama (what is it with Southerners and taking up arms against the Union…am I right?). She was issued a US passport as a child and to get that her father had to prove he wasn’t a diplomat when she was born, which presumably he did to the satisfaction of the US government because they gave her a passport, which they renewed in 2014. In fact she traveled to Turkey to join ISIS on her US passport. So while her not being a US citizen would simplify this whole thing for us (let her rot in Yemen or Syria), it seems that US government at least on two occasions ruled she was a citizen, by birth. Now the US government wants to declare do over.
Now people bring up the whole minor treason thing by joining ISIS, but from what I read the whole striping of citizenship is for naturalized citizens not birthright citizens (which frankly I don’t agree with, stripping citizenship from traitors seems just punishment regardless of how they got citizenship). So how does the government get around the fact that they issued her a passport (in effect acknowledging the rightness of her claims about citizenship) twice. I think administration officials might have jumped the Tweeter gun on this.
Say what you will about Obama but the man didn’t run into these problems, because he never took prisoners. #droneworryaboutit.
There are many ways that could have worked. Depends on the details. (If the government mistakenly (through fraud or otherwise) sends me a super-large social security check, that doesn’t mean it is obligated to keep on making the same monthly mistake for the rest of my life.)
This was Comment # 46, and the very first to address the core issue of citizenship. From what I heard, this is a cutting edge little piece of the birthright citizenship debate. @eugenekriegsmann has got to be right that if the woman was a “full” U.S. citizen (as I am and most on Richochet are), then there is no such thing as “revoking” citizenship. (Certainly not merely on the say-so of the Secretary of State.)
My understanding is that she was born in the United States of Syrian parents, at a time–perhaps–when her father was a Syrian diplomat. To some, that means that she did not become a birthright citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment. (Not “under the jurisdiction thereof,” and all that.) That’s not my view and not the view of many on the Left and the Right, but it has some plausible legs. There are no slam-dunks in the law.)
She seems to accept that analysis, but claims that at the time of her birth, her father was no longer a diplomat, but was simply a foreigner legally in the U.S. So that would make her a “full” birthright citizen, and would then make her just as able to keep her citizenship as all of us. (If we do bad things abroad and want to come home, we cannot be prevented from doing so, but may have to pay the price of our misdeeds.)
(Unless we are Marc Rich!)
She advocated violence against Americans (based on the Three Martini podcast). No one who had that position should be allowed back into the U.S. We already have enough security risks here.
Hoda Muthana is an “Alabama woman” in the same way that Bruce Jenner is a chick.
I read that she was born in Alabama but is for some reason not a citizen. Maybe her parents are diplomats and she never was a citizen or maybe her citizenship was revoked when she joined ISIS and took up arms against the U.S. If the latter, she’s a traitor. If for some reason she had been able to return to the U.S., I would have thought it just to see her tried for treason. If convicted, she could have spent her life in a federal prison. Lock her up and throw away the key.
I read that ISIS is now turning to women to conduct terrorist attacks because its ranks of men have been thinned over time. On U.S. soil the only place for her that allows everyone to sleep soundly is federal prison.
I don’t have any illusions. A future president could allow her back in the country. I don’t know what she could do to restore her residency, but fortunately it’s all moot because this president won’t let her back in. She has a long hard road to return.