Ahmed Ali Muthana files suit after officials said New Jersey-born daughter was not a US citizen and would not be allowed home

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The father of an Alabama woman who joined the Islamic State group in Syria is suing to bring her home, after the Trump administration took the extraordinary step of declaring that she is not a US citizen.

Hoda Muthana: US bars Alabama woman who joined Isis from returning Read more

Hoda Muthana, 24, told the Guardian she regretted leaving the US to join the terrorist group and wants to return from Syria with her 18-month-old son, whose father was a Tunisian jihadist killed in battle. She has said she is willing to face prosecution over her incendiary propaganda on behalf of the ruthless but dwindling group.

On Thursday, a day after Donald Trump declared on Twitter that he had issued orders to bar Muthana from the US, her father filed an emergency lawsuit asking a federal court to affirm that his daughter is a US citizen and let her return along with her son.

Ahmed Ali Muthana said in court documents he had attempted to send money to his daughter and grandson, but had been told by the FBI if he did so he would be considered to be providing material support to Isis.

“I do not want to support Isis,” he said. “I do want to help my daughter and grandson get to the United States.”

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

The US constitution grants citizenship to everyone born in the country, with the exception of children of diplomats, as they are not under US jurisdiction.

“Upon her return to the United States, Mr Muthana’s daughter is prepared and willing to surrender to any charges the United States justice department finds appropriate and necessary,” said the lawsuit filed with the US district court in Washington. “She simply requires the assistance of her government in facilitating that return for herself and her young son.”

In the lawsuit, Ahmed Ali Muthana said he was asked by Yemen to surrender his diplomatic identity card on 2 June 1994, as the country descended into civil war. His daughter was born in New Jersey on 28 October that year. The family settled in Hoover, Alabama, a prosperous suburb 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 diplomat until February 1995, the lawsuit said.

Hoda Muthana 'deeply regrets' joining Isis and wants to return home Read more

But it said that the state department accepted a letter from the US mission to the United Nations that affirmed Muthana had ended his position before his daughter’s birth. Hoda Muthana was granted a passport.

The lawsuit said Hoda Muthana is also entitled to citizenship via her mother, who became a US permanent resident in July 1994.

Muthana went to Syria in 2014, when Isis was carrying out a grisly campaign of beheadings and mass rape. She used social media to praise the killings of westerners.

The US government attempted to declare Muthana was not a citizen under the Obama administration in 2016, according to the lawsuit.

In January that year, the state department sent Hoda Muthana’s father a letter informing him her passport had been revoked and saying she was not a citizen, according to the suit. 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 on Wednesday, secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who is named in the lawsuit along with Trump, said Hoda Muthana was not a citizen.

Pompeo did not outline the legal rationale but in an interview with NBC on Thursday, asked if the key issue was that her father had been a diplomat, Pompeo said: “That’s right.”

Shamima Begum: I am willing to change to keep British citizenship Read more

In a separate interview with the Fox Business Network, Pompeo dismissed Muthana’s pleas to return home as a “heart strings” pitch .

“This is a woman who inflicted enormous risk on American soldiers, on American citizens,” he said. “She is a terrorist. She’s not coming back.”

It is extremely difficult for the US to strip a person of citizenship, a step taken by Britain in the case of homegrown jihadists.

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

Vladeck said that the US government had failed to show it underwent the formal process required to revoke someone’s citizenship. “There’s a process and it’s not at all clear that the government has show any interest in following it,” he said.

Last Sunday, Trump tweeted that the European Union must take back Isis fighters captured in Syria and put them on trial.

“The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them,” he said.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report