By Joshua Huff, sports editor
WASHINGTON — The former Hoover High School student who fled to Syria to join ISIS was declared a non-U.S. citizen on Thursday by a federal court judge.
Judge Reggie Walton in Washington, D.C. ruled that Hoda Muthana, who is being held in a Syrian refugee camp, is not a U.S. citizen. The judge found that there was insufficient evidence Muthana was born while her father was a U.S. diplomat to Yemen.
With the ruling, the government will not recognize Muthana as citizen of the United States, even though she was born in New Jersey.
Muthana, 25, who left the states in 2014 to join ISIS, had said that she wanted to come back to the U.S. with her son.
As a member of ISIS, she urged jihadists in America to “go on drivebys, and spill all of their blood.” She now says that she “regrets every single thing” and believes that she should be allowed to come back home.
She and her 2-year-old son now live in the al-Roj refugee camp.
Hoda Muthana
Muthana left her family and fled to Syria a year after graduating from high school. She fooled her parents into allowing her to go to Atlanta on a school field trip. Instead, she hopped on a plane and flew to Turkey and then into Syria. As an ISIS member, she married three fighters and urged those loyal to the cause to slaughter people in America.
Now, Muthana claims to reject the extremist ideology. She also fears retribution from those she calls the more “radical women around her.”
Muthana’s family was granted citizenship in 1994 due to the civil war that was ongoing in their home country. Though she used her U.S. passport to travel to Syria, the U.S. government argues that she should have never been considered a citizen in the first place because her father was serving the Yemeni government at the time.
Muthana says she just wanted to return home with her son.
“I want my son to be around my family, I want to go to school, I want to have a job and I want to have my own car,” she said.
