Court: ISIS bride not a US citizen

Last week we looked at the case of Hoda Muthana, the daughter of a Yemeni diplomat who left her home in Alabama and ran off to Syria to join up with ISIS. Once there, the “ISIS bride” married a series of terrorist fighters, eventually producing a child with one of them. Now she’s having some regrets and would like to be allowed to return to the United States and take up her old life. No harm, no foul, right?

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Her path became considerably more difficult yesterday when a federal judge ruled that Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and America is under no obligation to take her and her child back into the country. (NY Post)

“ISIS bride” Hoda Muthana is not a US citizen — and America is under no obligation to let her back into the country, a federal judge ruled Thursday, according to a new report.

Judge Reggie Walton found there was enough evidence to prove Muthana — the US-born mom who fled her home in Alabama to join the terror group in Syria in 2014 — was born while her father was a Yemeni diplomat, BuzzFeed News reported.

The judge said Muthana’s father, Ahmed Ali Muthana, can’t provide financial support to either her or her 2-year-old son without facing potential charges of providing material support to terrorism.

Muthana was born in the United States, but her father was a foreign diplomat. This is one of the few exceptions to the “natural born citizen” rule, meaning that she’s not automatically entitled to birthright citizenship. And since her child was born in a foreign country to a non-citizen, he’s not entitled to admission either.

The extra punch in the nose comes in the form of the material support question. Muthana publicly declared her allegiance to ISIS and took to social media to encourage all of the wannabe Jihadis in the United States to create mayhem and “spill our blood” in the streets. As such, she officially enlisted on Team Terror. So if she showed up here and her father gave her any money or other resources, he could be prosecuted for providing material support to terrorism and possibly wind up getting a cell on the same block in Gitmo as his daughter.

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It’s hard not to have sympathy for the child, though that’s no longer our problem either. But the well of sympathy for Ms. Muthana herself should be running fairly close to dry at this point. She wasn’t some confused child who was caught up in events beyond her control. She was fully an adult (age 19) when she decided to join the terrorist organization and present herself as a gift to their fighters. She was, by all accounts, living a very comfortable life in Alabama and could have been well on the way to eventual citizenship and a shot at the American dream.

Instead, she packed her bags, snuck over to Syria and hooked up with the Death to America crowd. You don’t just get to demand forgiveness for something like that. So stay where you are with your new “friends” and good riddance.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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David Strom 11:20 AM | November 21, 2024
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