President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to allow Hoda Muthana, an Alabama woman who left in November 2014 to join IS, to return to the US — despite her recent public plea to come back and stand trial in America.
“I have instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he fully agrees, not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!,” Trump tweeted.
Hours earlier, Pompeo declared that Muthana, who is detained in a Kurdish refugee camp, is not an American citizen.
“Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a US citizen and will not be admitted into the US. She does not have any legal basis, no valid US passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the US,” Pompeo said in a statement.
Muthana, now 24, was a college student when she travelled to Syria over four years ago to join IS — eventually marrying three fighters and calling for the killing of Americans on Twitter.
In a series of interviews this week from a sprawling camp in northern Syria with her infant son, she expressed deep remorse.
“When I left to Syria I was a naive, angry, and arrogant young woman,” she said in a handwritten statement provided by a representative. “To say that I regret my past words, any pain that I caused to my family and any concerns I would cause my country would be hard for me to really express properly.”
