WASHINGTON -- An Alabama woman who joined the Islamic State militant group in Syria won't be allowed to return to the United States with her toddler son because she is not an American citizen, the U.S. said on Wednesday. Her lawyer is challenging that claim.
In a brief statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave no details as to how the administration made its determination.
"Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States," he 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."
But her lawyer, Hassan Shibly, insisted Muthana was born in the United States and had a valid passport before she joined the Islamic State in 2014. He says she has renounced the terrorist group and wants to return home to protect her 18-month-old son regardless of the legal consequences.
"She's an American. Americans break the law," said Shibly, a lawyer with the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "When people break the law, we have a legal system to handle those kinds of situations to hold people accountable, and that's all she's asking for."
Muthana and her son are now in a refugee camp in Syria, along with others who fled the remnants of the Islamic State, including Kimberly Gwen Polman, 46, who had studied legal administration in Canada before joining the caliphate. Polman possesses dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship.
Shibly said the administration argues that Muthana didn't qualify for citizenship because her father was a Yemeni diplomat. But the lawyer said her father had not had diplomatic status "for months" before her birth in Hackensack, N.J.
President Donald Trump said later Wednesday on Twitter that he was behind the decision, tweeting that "I have instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he fully agrees, not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!"
The announcement came a day after Britain said it was stripping the citizenship of Shamima Begum, 19, who left the country in 2015 to join the Islamic State and recently gave birth in a refugee camp. Her baby has potential claims of British citizenship.
The British Home Office informed Begum's family members of its decision in a letter Tuesday.
"It's kind of heartbreaking to read," a teary Begum, 19, told an ITV News reporter who showed her a copy of the letter. "My family made it sound like it would be a lot easier for me to come back to the U.K. when I was speaking to them in Baghouz. It's kind of hard to swallow."
The U.S. has urged allies to take back citizens who joined the Islamic State but are now in the custody of the American-backed forces fighting the remnants of the brutally extremist group that once controlled a vast area spanning parts of Syria and Iraq.
Muthana's lawyer said she was "just a stupid, naive, young dumb woman" when she became enamored of the Islamic State, believing it was an organization that protected Muslims.
Shibly said she fled her family in Alabama and made her way to Syria, where she was "brainwashed" by the Islamic State and compelled to marry one of the group's soldiers. After he was killed, she married another, the father of her son.
After her second husband was also killed, she married a third militant fighter but "became disenchanted with the marriage" and decided to escape, the lawyer said.
Shibly, based in Tampa, Fla., said he intends to file a legal challenge to the government's decision to deny her entry to the country.
Muthana's status had been considered by lawyers from the departments of State and Justice since her case arose, according to one U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The official would not elaborate but said Pompeo's statement was based on the lawyers' conclusions.
Most people born in the United States are accorded so-called birthright citizenship, but there are exceptions. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a person born in the U.S. to an accredited foreign diplomatic officer is not subject to U.S. law and is not automatically considered a U.S. citizen at birth.
However, Muthana's case is unusual, if not unprecedented in that she once held a U.S. passport. Passports are only issued to citizens by birth or naturalization.
In a handwritten letter released by Shibly, Muthana wrote that she made "a big mistake" by rejecting her family and friends in the United States to join the Islamic State.
"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," she said.
Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Lee, Jay Reeves and Joshua Replogle of The Associated Press; by Rukmini Callimachi and Catherine Porter of The New York Times; and by Karla Adam, James McAuley, Michael Birnbaum and Felicia Sonmez of The Washington Post.
A Section on 02/21/2019