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Pompeo: ISIS Bride Is A Terrorist, Not A US Citizen

NBC News

Amber Athey Podcast Columnist
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a Thursday morning interview that the ISIS bride seeking reentry into the United States is not a citizen because she was born to a diplomat.

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Hoda Muthana, a woman from Alabama who defected and joined the Islamic State, is now pleading to return to the United States, saying she made a mistake by joining the terrorist group. President Donald Trump urged Pompeo not to allow the woman back into the country, and Pompeo said Wednesday that she does not have “legal basis” to return. (RELATED: ISIS Bride Denied Re-Entry To US)

Pompeo explained in an interview with Craig Melvin on NBC News’ “Today” that the woman is not a citizen of the United States.

The secretary of state explained:

You have to remember the context. We’ve now taken down all but the last square inch of the caliphate in Syria, millions of people liberated by President Trump and our administration, the great things that our soldiers have done on the ground. There are not over 800 terrorists that are being held. She’s just one of them. She is a terrorist. She’s not a U.S. citizen. She ought not return to this country.

Melvin noted that the woman was born in New Jersey, and Pompeo replied, “She may have born here, she is not a U.S. citizen, nor is she entitled to U.S. citizenship.”

“Was that because she was the daughter of a diplomat when she was born here?” Melvin asked.

“That’s right,” Pompeo asserted.

According to The New York Times, Muthana’s father was a Yemeni diplomat. Children of diplomats are not usually granted birthright citizenship because diplomats are under the jurisdiction of their home countries.

Charlie Swift, the director of the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America, claims that rule does not apply because Muthana’s father was discharged from his diplomatic duties a month before his daughter was born. Swift also noted that Muthana was issued a U.S. passport when she was a child and that she renewed it shortly before defecting to Syria.

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