Government officials said 24-year-old Hoda Muthana, a U.S.-born woman who joined the Islamic State, is not allowed back on U.S. soil.
"I have instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he fully agrees, not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!" U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday.
"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 in a statement. "We continue to strongly advise all U.S. citizens not to travel to Syria."
Muthana reportedly left Alabama in 2014, telling her parents she was going to a university event in Turkey. But she was smuggled into Syria, where she met with ISIS and allegedly began spreading online propaganda on its behalf.
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There, she was captured by Kurdish forces after escaping ISIS-held territory and now lives in a refugee camp in northern Syria with her young son. She said she has been brainwashed and "deeply regrets" joining the terrorist group, and wants to return home to her family in Alabama.
Charlie Swift, director of the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America, who is representing her family, told the New York Times that after she joined ISIS, her family received a letter saying that her U.S. passport had been revoked.
According to David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, associating with a terrorist group is not necessarily grounds to revoke someone's citizenship. "If the passport was a legitimate passport and she was a U.S. citizen, nothing that Pompeo says takes away her citizenship," Leopold told the NYT. Another lawyer, who is advising the family, said that Muthana "is trying to turn herself in to federal authorities and face consequences for her actions."
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