President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that he instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to deny
Hoda Muthana’s reentry. | Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images
The father of an Alabama woman who joined ISIS and is now seeking a return to the U.S. filed a lawsuit Thursday against President Donald Trump and other senior officials after the president said he had moved to bar her from reentry.
Ahmed Ali Muthana filed the lawsuit in Washington D.C. federal district court on behalf of Hoda Muthana, his daughter, who left Alabama in 2014 at the age of 19 and joined the terrorist group in Syria.
Muthana has claimed she is a U.S. citizen, but the Trump administration says her status as the daughter of a Yemeni diplomat means she is not a naturalized citizen and thus not entitled to the Constitutional rights of an American citizen.
Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that he instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to deny Muthana’s reentry. Pompeo on Wednesday said in a statement that Muthana was not a U.S. citizen and had no “legal basis” to be brought back to the United States. Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr are also named in the suit.
The suit contests the State Department’s position that Muthana is not a legal citizen, saying she and her son, identified as John Doe in court documents, should be able to return without interference.
According to the suit, Muthana’s father was a diplomat for Yemen at the United Nations in New York, but he turned in his diplomatic card in June 1994. The family has produced documents that appear to show Hoda Muthana was born on October 28, 1994, in New Jersey, and at that time Ahmed Ali Muthana and his wife had applied for and been granted permanent resident status in the U.S. Therefore, the suit argues, Hoda Muthana would be a citizen at birth.
The suit claims Hoda Muthana was issued a passport in 2004, that was renewed a decade later, when the government questioned whether she was eligible for a passport given her father’s status, but after additional documents were produced, was granted one after all.
As a citizen at birth, Hoda Muthana would be entitled to the Constitutional protections. While there are instances where the government could then still revoke her citizenship, the process would be far more complicated.
For the time being, according to the suit, Hoda Muthana and her child are being held in Syria by Kurdish forces. According to the suit, Ahmed Ali Muthana seeks a ruling whereby it would be legal for him to provide financial support for their return trip, that the federal government be told they cannot deprive his daughter or his grandson of their Constitutional rights, and the government be reminded that it has “an obligation to assist in the return of its citizens from armed areas of conflict.”
Hoda Muthana, the suit says, would also be willing to face any potential charges from the Justice Department related to her allegiance to ISIS. In her time overseas, she had married three ISIS fighters and used her Twitter account to spread their anti-American message.
