US-born 'ISIS bride' Hoda Muthana isn't an American citizen and can't come back, judge rules

A woman born in New Jersey, who fled the United States to join the Islamic State five years ago, isn't an American citizen and won't be leaving the Syrian refugee camp where she resides, a federal judge ruled.

Hoda Muthana, the so-called ISIS bride, “doesn’t have a constitutional right to return to the United States because she is not a U.S. citizen,” Judge Reggie Walton of the District of Columbia District Court ruled Thursday.

Muthana, 25, left her family home in Alabama and dropped out of school in 2014 after making contact with ISIS fighters through social media. She was born to a Yemeni diplomat in 1994 and was issued an American passport despite eventual confusion about when her father's diplomatic post officially came to an end.

Muthana burned her U.S. passport in 2014 and declared herself to be a part of the caliphate, using social media to encourage others to join too. She married an Australian-born ISIS fighter who was killed in 2015 and then married a Tunisian-born fighter who was also killed, but with whom she had a son. Muthana also married and divorced another fighter.

During the brief hearing Thursday afternoon, the judge heard arguments from Christina Jump, who was representing Hoda Muthana’s father Mohammed Ali Muthana, and from DOJ attorney Scott Stewart, who was appearing on behalf of the State Department and the U.S. government. Walton’s surprise ruling came after a fifteen-minute recess. The judge’s quick decision may have been based on the recent shifting and uncertain conditions in Syria he referenced in his opening remarks. Walton said he’d issue a written opinion within 30 days.

The easy grounds for excluding her would be that her father was the Yemeni ambassador at the time, if in fact that were true. Under the Law of Nations and the Natural Law, such individuals have NEVER been considered members of the polity in the country to which their parent was the ambassador, but rather citizens of the country OF WHICH their parent was an ambassador.

Now, as far as I recall, things get murky pretty fast when the parent in question is not a bona fide foreign ambassador, but is some kind of lesser official, such as a high level “diplomat” who is nevertheless not the ambassador, or who, though their country’s highest official here present, is formally or technically speaking not AN ambassador. The U.S. government really cannot be heard to claim that such children are U.S. citizens (e.g. for purposes of Selective Service Registration/wartime draft), since to do so would be considered undiplomatic in the extreme. Nevertheless purist interpretations of the 14th Amendment would seem to suggest that the U.S. government could make a straight-faced claim in favor of citizenship for such individuals if it were inclined to do so, based on non-ambassador parentage and birth in the United States of America. This is the kind of pretzel logic we invite into our system when we fail to put appropriate limits on so-called “born citizenship” for individuals, neither of whose parents were U.S. citizens at the time of their birth. It never was a workable theory but we seemed to have slipped so far into that way of thinking over the years that U.S. officials are now loathe to begin propounding any contrary theories.

I’d wager that eventually the U.S. will relent and stop arguing against U.S. citizenship in this woman’s case.

By the way, if she manages to weasel her way back into the United States and is formally recognized as a U.S. citizen, one would have to admit that in accordance with a similar line of reasoning, John Sidney McCain III was a born and lifelong citizen of Panama. Not for nothing, but also not that this should make a difference, but McCain was NOT born on a U.S. military facility within the confines of the Panama Canal Zone. There WAS a medical facility on base at that time but it was NOT equipped with a maternity ward. Accordingly, John Sidney McCain, III was born in Colon Hospital, Colon, Panama to two U.S. citizens, one of which was a U.S. Navy Admiral. Sort of the same level of official as a “diplomat”, wouldn’t you say?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.