The father of the Alabama woman who joined ISIS is suing President Trump for denying her entry back into the United States.
Ahmed Ali Muthana filed a lawsuit Thursday arguing the Trump administration is making an “unlawful attempt” to take away his 24-year-old daughter’s U.S. citizenship, according to CNN. The suit, filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court, also names Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr.
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Hoda Muthana left Hoover, Ala. in 2014 at the age of 19, traveled to Syria, and joined ISIS. She married, in succession, three Islamic State soldiers and has a toddler son. She served as a propagandist for the terrorist group, encouraging supporters to attack the U.S. “Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them,” she wrote on Twitter in March 2015 under the name Umm Jihad.
Muthana says she surrendered with her son last month to the coalition fighting ISIS and is being held in a detainee camp in northeastern Syria. She said she regrets joining the terrorist group and wants to come home to the U.S. The lawsuit states that Muthana “is prepared and willing to surrender to any charges the United States Justice Department finds appropriate and necessary.”
The Trump administration, however, insists that Muthana will not be allowed back into the country. “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 Wednesday. Muthana’s father filed the lawsuit the next day.
The administration says that Muthana is not a U.S. citizen because her father was in the country as a diplomatic officer when she was born in New Jersey in 1994. The Muthana family’s lawyer, Hassan Shibly, denies that claim, saying his diplomatic status had ended by his daughter’s birth and the Trump administration is illegally denying Muthana her birthright citizenship.
