Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejected the citizenship argument being made by Hoda Muthana, a woman known as an 'ISIS bride' for her decision to leave the U.S. and marry a terrorist fighter in Syria, calling her a 'noncitizen terrorist' and adding 'she's not coming back to the United States.'
'She's a noncitizen terrorist. She has no legal basis for her claim of U.S. citizenship. She's not coming back to the United States to create the risk that somebody should return to the battlefield and continue to put at risk American people, American kids, American boys and girls that were sent to help defeat ISIS. She put them at risk. She's not a citizen. She's not coming back,' Pompeo said on 'Fox News Sunday.'
'Fox News Sunday' host Chris Wallace pressed Pompeo on Muthana's citizenship issue but he didn't elaborate other than to say the U.S. has a 'strong legal basis for our claim.'
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejected the citizenship argument being made by Hoda Muthana and called her a 'noncitizen terrorist'
Pompeo said Muthana, who left home to join the Islamic State group in Syria, is not a U.S. citizen and will not be allowed to return to the United States
'So, there's litigation ongoing,' Pompeo said. 'Here's what I can tell you, we have a strong legal basis for our claim that she is not citizen and she's not coming back.'
Muthana attorney Hassan Shibly told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that his client is a citizen because she was born in the U.S. He claimed the Trump administration is trying to make her a 'test case' to support the president's position that awarding birthright citizenship requires a misreading of the U.S. Constitution.
'The Trump administration has been trying to limit birthright citizenship,' Shibly said, claiming the president will likely 'try to use' the case 'against a much broader group of Americans, mostly Latino Americans.'
President Trump said Wednesday afternoon that he was the one who made the decision to bar Muthana, 24, from returning to the United States.
'I have instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he fully agrees, not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!' he tweeted.
Muthana, who has an 18-month-old son, wants to submit herself to the justice system, her attorney has said, claiming she was born in Hackensack, New Jersey and raised in Hoover, Alabama.
Her father, Ahmed Ali Muthana, was a Yemeni diplomat.
Diplomats' children are not entitled to U.S. birthright citizenship in the U.S.
Shibly says her father had left his diplomatic post by the time of her birth and produced a letter from the U.S. Mission to the U.N. as evidence.
He told DailyMail.com that the Trump administration is trying to 'strip citizenship' from Muthana and 'they cannot do that without [a] process.'
Responding to a State Department spokesperson's suggestion that Muthana could have received a U.S. passport as a non-citizen, he said, 'That's garbage, literally garbage.'
He said Muthana has a Social Security Number and has always been and still is a U.S. citizen.
Hassan Shibly, an attorney for her family, said the U.S. government is trying to claim she's not a citizen because her father was once a diplomat. He wasn't when she was born, though
Her birth certificate, a copy of which was shared on Twitter her family lawyer and was not independently verified by DailyMail.com, shows that she was born Oct. 28, 1994 in Hackensack, New Jersey
'Hoda is actually trying to engage the legal system and turn herself in,' he said, but Trump wants to push the problem out of the United States' jurisdiction. 'I think that's insane.'
Muthana, who left America four years ago to join ISIS, has previously been issued two U.S. passports – one when she was a child and another in 2014.
Her birth certificate, a copy of which was shared on Twitter her family lawyer and was not independently verified by DailyMail.com, shows that she was born Oct. 28, 1994 in Hackensack, New Jersey.
A State Department spokesperson did not address Shibly's claims directly but told DailyMail.com over email that Muthana 'was not born a U.S. citizen and she has never been a U.S. citizen' even though she was born in the
