"I'm as American as Any Blond, Blue Eyed Girl...."

Parent Cafe
1

ISIS Bride - Hoda Muthana

What do you think? She left the USA in 2014, age 20, she fled to Syria and married and was widowed by three ISIS fighters. Allegedly, one of her tweets reads: “Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them,”
Now she wants to come ‘home’ and this is what she says:
“I hope America doesn’t think I’m a threat to them and I hope they can accept me and I’m just a normal human being who’s been manipulated once and hopefully never again.”

Her family are suing the government to allow her back into the USA

For context, Britain just this week, stripped Shamima Begum of her citizenship; she left the UK when, she was 15 to join ISIS and flee to Syria where she married twice, and had children

2

I’m suspicious of her loyalty to the USA. Seeing some red flags here.

3

She claims she was born in NJ and was issued a US passport (twice). If she is indeed a citizen, her citizenship would need to be revoked and there is a process for that, not just the Sec of State saying that’s the case. So, that has either happened or it hasn’t.

I don’t think English is her first language, which of course could be true even if she were born in NJ and raised in a ‘closed’ community, but it is so unlikely with TV and media. I just think her background needs some investigation before a passport is issued again.

4

I think she should be held in detention with all the others wanting to enter the country — actually at the back of the line.

5 
          WRT SHamima, she should never have been allowed to speak to media, her lawyers have done her a great disservice. If you are a representing a dumbarse, mouthy opinionated 19 yr old, you keep her away from the media.  It is almost as if her legal people preferred this outcome as they got so much exposure. Frankly, it's hard to have much sympathy. I really think though, society needs to look at why a 15 yr old would have such fantasies about a country her parents left. Families need to do some soul searching about stories they tell.
6

Tricky situation- her dad was a Yemeni diplomat and normally children born to diplomats while in the US do not get automatic US citizenship since diplomats are in the US but under the jurisdiction of their home country. But, her father was relieved of his diplomatic responsibilities a month before she was born. So, is she a citizen?? News articles say her passport was revoked when it was discovered she had lied about her overseas travel and had joined the Islamic state her passport was revoked. It appears that if she has omitted an act of treason, she may not be permitted to return to the US. WIll be interesting to see how this plays out. I am not at present uncomfortable with her being in a refugee camp.

7

On the Today show this morning, I thought it was implied that her parents were diplomats when she was born here, so she didn’t get citizenship. Maybe I was multitasking!

8

Keep her out. She is no longer an American, if she ever was. 8 USC Sec. 1481 should apply.

We don’t need her. Or her kids.

9

Adding to the confusion, she would have been automatically naturalized when her parents were granted US citizenship - except that they believed she was a citizen by birth, and the naturalization process would have been both unnecessary and improper.

Being a good person is not a precondition to US citizenship. I don’t see this as any better than the Korean adoptees whose parents didn’t file the right paperwork being deported as adults.

10

There is no way legally to bar her return. The State Department has a five year window to rescind for a false application. There’s no loyalty test for a citizen to have citizenship revoked. It’s protected.

However, there are laws against the sort of thing she has done. You can be arrested for simply associating and planning to join ISIS etc. She’s clearly gone way past this level. Perhaps treason or aid and comfort to an enemy.

The only option is to make it clear she can come home and thst she will be arrested immediately.

Better option is to seek admittance to Paraguay or other countries with no extradition to US. And also wouldn’t care about her allegiances.

11

No, the story is that the father had been a diplomat, but had lost that status prior to the time of his daughter’s birth:

https://www.vox.com/world/2019/2/22/18236309/hoda-muthana-isis-citizen-trump-pompeo

Birthright citizenship can be renounced by an individual, but it cannot be unilaterally revoked by the government. The Supreme Court held in Trop v. Dulles (1958) that it is unconstitutional to revoke birthright citizenship as punishment for a crime. (Trop was an army deserter).

So whatever crimes may or may not have been committed are irrelevant – the sole question is whether she was a citizen in the first place, and that goes back to figuring out the father’s status at the time of her birth.

This needs to be decided by the courts — the passport issue is irrelevant. (You don’t need a passport to be a citizen). But as noted in the article I linked to, the path to getting a court decision is more complicated – there are jurisdictional issues that could lead to the father’s lawsuit being thrown out of court without a determination of the underlying issue.

12

I very much dislike the idea that if an American does something bad, she’s no longer an American. This young woman is a native-born American citizen (assuming that her father was no longer a diplomat when she was born, which seems to be the case). She’s not a non-citizen; she’s a citizen who did bad things. The State Department is clear:

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Renunciation-US-Nationality-Abroad.html

As far as we know, she has done none of those things. She’s ours. She’s ours to arrest, try and convict, but she’s ours.

We have a government of laws. If the government thinks it can strip her of citizenship, it needs to go through due process. A declaration by the President or one of his cabinet officers is not due process.

13

Hoping this isn’t too political: Our government is urging other countries to take their citizens who are being held back and put them on trial. So we need to do the same thing. Bring her back and put her through due process.

14

As the Vox link above points out, this one is complicated. The first question is whether she’s a citizen at all. The Obama administration concluded that she wasn’t.

15

Thanks for that article, @calmom , it explains a lot.

There are only 2 government agencies that can confer or determine US citizenship, the State Department (to issue a passport to a citizen) and Homeland Security/USCIS. She never applied through USCIS. so they never made a determination.

The State department has determined she is not a citizen and was not one at birth.

I’d think she has two choices now. 1. do an administrative action with the state department (passport office) to reverse the decision that she was not born a citizen. If she is not successful, she could then appeal to federal court but she must first exhaust her administrative remedies. She would not be suing to have a federal court declare her a citizen but appealing the administrative decision and request that the state department issue her a passport.

  1. apply for citizenship through the USCIS process. This, of course, will never be approved because as of the application date, she would not qualify (I think she'd be considered a felon).

I think the case in federal court (her father’s suit) will be dismissed because she hasn’t exhausted her administrative remedies and there is NO process for federal courts to grant citizenship. If there were, many people would skip the USCIS and just go to court. Congress can pass a special bill, but I don’t see that happening either.

She won’t be back in the USA.

16

Joining ISIS should satisfy the requirements of Section 1481(a)(7) of Title 8 of the US Code. Marrying three fighters and having children with two of them seals the deal. At least that is the argument that should be made by the administration, on the off chance that she was actually a citizen.

quote A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality: … (7) …willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18…

[/quote]

18 USC Sec. 2385 provides in pertinent part:

She should live with the choices she made. There’s no reason for her and her children to become public charges in the United States. I don’t even understand why she would want to live in such a racist society as ours, now that she has seen how wonderful and welcoming other countries are.

17

SatchelSF, I bolded the parts of the statute I think relevant.

quote A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality—

[(1)-(6) don’t apply here]

(7) committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18, or violating section 2384 of title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.

(b) Whenever the loss of United States nationality is put in issue in any action or proceeding commenced on or after September 26, 1961 under, or by virtue of, the provisions of this chapter or any other Act, the burden shall be upon the person or party claiming that such loss occurred, to establish such claim by a preponderance of the evidence.**

[/quote]

First, the person has to commit the treason, etc. with the intent of relinquishing her citizenship; it’s not enough to just do it. Second, she has to be convicted of the treason etc. by a court martial (irrelevant here) or a court. In other words, she gets due process. A cabinet secretary making an assertion is not a conviction in a court.

I’m not sure why you are so certain she wasn’t a citizen at birth. It seems to me she’s entitled to a hearing about that. It’s undisputed she was born here, so the issue is the citizenship status of her father at the time of her birth.

18

I’m with those who think that there is a case to be made for her citizenship, unrelated to what she’s done. Aside from that, I think that there would be a lot to gain from that. If she is a citizen, she will be tried for treason and be put in prison, and she knows it. Evidently she claims that she has changed her mind, and prefers to come to the USA and stay in prison, rather than go back to ISIS. Having her in prison, and having her interviewed for Muslim communities across the USA explaining how prison in the USA is still better than being with ISIS is a very useful tool to keep people, at least women, from wanting to join ISIS.

If she doesn’t want to play ball, she can rot in isolation for however long they give her in prison. I’m pretty progressive in some things, but there are actions which put somebody outside of normal human considerations. Actively supporting ISIS’s ideology and actions are within that category.

19

If she was a citizen at birth, then her son can be granted US citizenship. He could go live with her parents and maybe she really is thinking that he should have a better life than starving in a camp.

20

She was a college student who cashed in her tuition, bought a plane ticket and flew off to Syria. But she bought a plane ticket and flew as an American citizen, right? There was nothing about her not being a citizen then? It’s only a retroactive decision that she was never a citizen?