The Unfolding Case of Hoda Muthana: More Legally Complex Than Trump-Pompo Will Accept

At first, what people thought was best for Hoda Muthana

The center of this developing and very complex legal case

(It will surely end up in court and possibly @SCOTUS)

Note right up front: My position on this story has changed as stated below:

The brewing legal battle hinges on a murky timeline of bureaucratic paperwork filed in 1994, when Hoda Muthana was born and her father left a position at Yemen’s mission to the United Nations.

Note: The Constitution grants citizenship to everyone born in the country, with the exception of children of diplomats, as they are not under U.S. jurisdiction.

The lawsuit filed in the DC District Court says in part: “Upon her return to the United States Ms. Muthana is prepared and willing to surrender to any charges the DOJ finds appropriate and necessary. She simply requires the assistance of her government in facilitating that return for herself and her young son.”

In the lawsuit, her father, Ahmed Ali Muthana said he was asked by Yemen to surrender his diplomatic identity card on June 2, 1994, as the country descended into civil war. His daughter, Hoda, was born in Hackensack, NJ on October 28, 1984. The family then settled in Hoover, AL, just south of Birmingham.

The state department first questioned Hoda Muthana’s right to citizenship when her father sought a passport for her, because US records showed he had been a Yemeni diplomat and thus Hoda was not entitled to being an American citizen.

But it also said that the state department accepted a letter from the U.S. mission to the UN that affirmed Muthana had ended his position before his daughter’s birth. Hoda Muthana was then granted a U.S. passport. 

The lawsuit also says that Hoda Muthana is also entitled to her U.S. citizenship via her mother, who became a U.S. permanent resident in July 1994, three months before Hoda was born in NJ.

Hoda Muthana went to Syria in 2014, when ISIS was carrying out their grisly campaign of beheadings and mass rape. She used social media to praise the killings of westerners. Note: No proof of her participating in any killings.

Note: The U.S. also attempted to declare that she was not a citizen under during the Obama administration in 2016, according to the same lawsuit.

In January 2016, the state department sent Hoda Muthana’s father a letter informing him her passport had been revoked and saying she was not a citizen, also in noted in the lawsuit. Her father responded with the same information he used the first time the state department questioned his daughter’s citizenship.

In a terse statement issued Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is named in the lawsuit along with President Trump, said Hoda Muthana was not a citizen. Pompeo did not outline the legal rationale but in an interview with NBC when asked if the key issue was that her father had been a diplomat, Pompeo said: “That’s right.”

In a separate interview with the Fox Business Network, Pompeo dismissed Muthana’s pleas to return home as a “heart strings pitch,” then he added: “This is a woman who inflicted enormous risk on American soldiers, on American citizens. She is a terrorist. She’s not coming back.”

It is extremely difficult for the US to strip a person of citizenship (e.g., like the steps taken in the UK in cases of homegrown jihadists). 

In the U.S. cite Afroyim v. Rusk (1967) USSC ruling (5-4) that the government cannot just take away natural citizenship, and only can in limited naturalized cases (e.g., if fraud is proven in the process).

Related Sources: (1) https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-us-citizens-can-lose-us-citizenship.html 

and (2) https://immigration.findlaw.com/citizenship/can-your-u-s-citizenship-be-revoked-.html

Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas says: “The secretary of state can’t just issue a statement saying someone is not a citizen. That’s not how this works.”

Vladeck went on to say that the U.S. government had failed to show it underwent the formal process required to revoke someone’s citizenship. Vladeck concluded: “There’s a process and it’s not at all clear that the government has shown any interest in following it.”

My 2 cents: Based on my research and the cases and law cited above, this is my view:

(1) Issue her a new U.S. passport.

(2) Allow her to return to the U.S.

(3) Take her into custody upon her arrival.

(4) Charge her with terrorist-related crime(s), try her, and then allow “due process” to determine her fate.

That is the right of every American citizen that she now says she wants to be again. So, we allow the justice system to decide. That’s the American way.

We shall see. Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by.