21 February 2019•Update: 22 February 2019
By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON
A woman who traveled to Daesh-controlled territory at the height of the terror group's reign is a "terrorist" who should not be allowed to return to the U.S., Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday.
"She is not a U.S. citizen. She ought return to this country," Pompeo insisted a day after saying Hoda Muthana has no legal basis for returning to the U.S.
Muthana left her hometown of Hoover, Alabama in November 2014, bound for Daesh's self-proclaimed "caliphate."
She is one of roughly 60 known Americans who traveled to Iraq and Syria to join Daesh, according to data compiled by Washington University's Program on Extremism.
While there she took the name Umm Jihad, or "Mother of Jihad," and regularly used her social media accounts to stoke pro-Daesh sentiments, laud the group and call on Muslim-Americans to carry out attacks against their countrymen.
"You have much to do while you live under our greatest enemy, enough of your sleeping! Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them,” she wrote March 15, on Twitter, according to a copy of the tweets obtained from the George Washington University by the New York Times.
The tweets could not be independently verified as her account has been suspended.
But Hassan Shibly, an attorney for Muthana's family, told CNN she is "willing to pay the debt she owes to society, including facing jail time" if she is allowed to return to the U.S., insisting she was "brainwashed by ISIS."
"What's very ironic about this is Hoda is being asked to be held accountable to our legal system and pay the debt she has to society while Trump is essentially giving her a free pass."
Shibly claimed Muthana did not have "complete control" of her social media accounts while she was in Daesh-controlled territory.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he instructed Pompeo not to allow Muthana back into the U.S.
Amid the Trump administration's push to bar her re-entry, Muthana's legal status remains a mystery.
The children of diplomats born in the U.S. are not automatically granted U.S. citizenship unlike other children born in the country.
Her legal team insists Muthana's father, a Yemeni diplomat, was not serving as an envoy at the time when she was born in New Jersey, claiming he departed his post months prior.
Shibly posted a photo of what appears to be Muthana's birth certificate as well as a 2004 letter purported to be from the U.S.'s UN mission to the U.S. immigration agency, then known as the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, verifying that her father's diplomatic posting expired at the start of September 1994.
Muthana was not born until the following October, and Shibly said on Twitter it is proof the U.S. government knew her father was no longer a diplomat when she was born.
In response to inquiries from Anadolu Agency, a State Department spokeswoman who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly said the letter "only addresses" Ahmed Ali Muthana's diplomatic privileges "during his reported length of service," and fails to address when those "privileges and immunities began and ended."
"As a general matter, the Department relies on the individual missions to the United Nations (UN) to notify the UN of terminations of assignment. The Department learns of the termination from the UN," the spokeswoman said.
"Until notification of termination is received by the Department, the United States would generally not be aware of the termination of an assignment and thus would continue to extend diplomatic privileges and immunities to the accredited diplomats," she added.
The department would not elaborate further due to privacy considerations.
