President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared Wednesday that an Alabama woman will not be allowed to return to the U.S. after traveling to Syria to join ISIS in 2014.
Pompeo said that Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and does not have any valid visa to come back to America. Muthana has pleaded with the government to let her return to her family, telling The Guardian in an interview published this week that she regrets leaving the U.S. for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
{mosads}“Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States. She does not have any legal basis, no valid U.S. passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the United States. We continue to strongly advise all U.S. citizens not to travel to Syria,” Pompeo said in a statement.
Lawyers for Muthana’s family have told several media outlets that she is a citizen. However, the State Department told The Hill that Muthana was not born a citizen and never had U.S. citizenship, adding that it could not provide further information due to privacy concerns.
Trump tweeted later Wednesday afternoon that he and Pompeo see eye-to-eye on the issue:
Muthana left Alabama in 2014, telling her family she was going to Atlanta for a school trip, according to AL.com. She traveled to Turkey from Atlanta and then crossed the border into Syria.
She eventually became an online recruiter for ISIS. She was captured by Kurdish fighters and is currently in a refugee camp in Northern Syria.
“I don’t know, I thought I was doing things correctly for the sake of God,” Muthana told The Guardian. “And when I came here and saw everything with my own eyes I realized I’ve made a big mistake.”
She told ABC News in a separate interview that she no longer harbors the ideology that pushed her to join ISIS and hopes the U.S. government does not view her as a threat.
“I hope they excuse me because of how young and ignorant I was. Now I’m changed. Now I’m a mother and I have none of the ideology and hopefully everyone will see it when I come back,” she said. “I hope America doesn’t think I’m a threat to them and I hope they can accept me.”
Muthana said she wishes to bring her son back to the U.S. as well. She was married to three different ISIS fighters, two of whom died fighting, and had a child with one, according to USA Today.
—Updated at 6:03 p.m.