Pompeo Denies ‘ISIS Bride’ Request to Return to U.S. By Jack Crowe
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that an Alabama woman who fled to Syria to join ISIS in 2014 is not a U.S. citizen and, as a result, is not entitled to return to the U.S. with her 18-month-old son, as she had hoped to do.
“Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States,” Pompeo said in a statement. “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. We continue to strongly advise all U.S. citizens not to travel to Syria.”
Muthana, 24, was taken to a refugee camp in northeast Syria by Kurdish forces after escaping ISIS territory.
An attorney representing Muthana’s parents claims she is a U.S. citizen despite the fact that her father was serving as a Yemeni diplomat when she was born in New Jersey, which, according to the State Department, means she is not entitled to birthright citizenship.
Muthana’s son was fathered by one of the three ISIS fighters she was married to during her time in the caliphate. In a 2015 tweet, she urged Americans to carry out domestic terror attacks.
“Americans wake up! Men and women altogether. You have much to do while you live under our greatest enemy, enough of your sleeping!” she wrote, according to The Guardian. “Go on drivebys, and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them. Veterans, Patriots, Memorial, etc day . . . Kill them.”
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Muthana pleaded with U.S. officials to allow her return to America, citing her youth and immaturity at the time she fled to Syria.
“I would tell them please forgive me for being so ignorant, and I was really young and ignorant and I was 19 when I decided to leave,” she said.
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