Feb 22, 2019
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has barred a US-born ISIS propagandist,
24-year old Hoda Muthana, from entering the country, saying she has no legal
basis to be in the country.
However, her lawyers and family members claim that she was issued a US passport
in 2014 before leaving the country. She “is not a US citizen and will not be
admitted into the United States. 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,”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday in a statement.
Ahmed Ali Muthana, father of the Alabama woman, who joined the Islamic State
group in Syria is suing to bring her home.
Hoda is among roughly 13 individuals identified as Americans who are currently
being held by Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria, and who have encountered
similar issues with repatriation into the United States recently as Isis has
lost nearly all its significant geographical strongholds, Independent said.
Hoda was born in Hackensack, New Jersey in 1994, just after her father left
his job as a former United Nations diplomat from Yemen, according to documentation
presented by the family and their lawyers.
David Leopold, the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association,
told The Independent that denying Ms Muthana the ability to return to America
and argue her case denies her an essential right laid out in the US Constitution,
which protects an individual's right to due process. Regardless of what heinous
crimes she may have committed if she joined forces with Isis, he said, the US
government is required to grant her due process before the courts.
She had burnt her US passport.
The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution provides birthright citizenship to
everyone born on US soil. But children born in the US to foreign diplomats must
be citizens of their parents’ home countries, not US citizens, it is argued.
Meanwhile, Australia issued a statement that it will not allow entry to its
citizens who have joined or supported the ISIS and gone to either Iraq or Syaria.
The UK is also issuing similar orders.