Pompeo on ‘ISIS Bride’ Hoda Muthana: ‘She’s Not a U.S. Citizen, She’s Not Coming Back’
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that U.S.-born former ISIS member Hoda Muthana will not be allowed to return to the United States because “She’s not a U.S. citizen, she’s not coming back.”
On Sunday morning’s edition of Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Pompeo about Muthana’s case.
“Hoda Muthana, the young woman who left the United States four years ago to join ISIS, says that she wants to return here to face justice,” Wallace said. “You have said she’s not an American citizen, she will not be allowed in. She was born in the United States, she did have a U.S. passport, and in the past other ISIS fighters, men who have been captured and brought back here to face Justice.”
“Look, nobody has any sympathy for Hoda Muthana, but I guess the question is why is her case different?” Wallace continued. “Why not allow her to come back in if she was born in the US and has a passport, and face Justice here?”
“She is a non-citizen terrorist, she has no legal basis for a claim of US citizenship, and she’s not going back to the United States to create the risk that someday she could return to the battlefield and continue to put at risk American people, American kids, American boys and girls that were sent to help defeat ISIS,” Pompeo said.
Muthana has said that she expects to receive jail time for her actions.
“She put them at risk, she’s not a U.S. citizen, she’s not coming back,” Pompeo said.
“Even though she was born in the U.S., I just trying to get understand the issue, is the issue that her father was a diplomat at the time?” Wallace asked. “Because they say he had stopped being a diplomat before she was born.”
“So there’s little litigation ongoing,” Pompeo said. “Here’s what I can tell you: we have a strong legal basis for our claim that she’s not a citizen, and she’s not coming back.”
Pompeo did not explain, and Wallace did not ask, how keeping Muthana out of a U.S. court would increase the risk that she’s return to the battlefield more than leaving her in Syria would.
Watch the clip above, via Fox News Channel.
[Image via screengrab]
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