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SState Secretary for Foreign Affairs Mike Pompeo said that an Alabama woman who has joined the Islamic State will not be allowed to return to the United States because she is not a citizen.
"Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a US citizen and will not be admitted to the US She has no legal basis, no valid US passport, no passport, no visa to travel to the US Said Pompeo in a statement released Wednesday.
Pompeo's statement contradicts his family and his Tampa-based lawyer, who insists that she was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1994.
Muthana told the New York Times in an article published on Tuesday that she wanted to return home to the United States after she returned to US troops last month.
According to the New York Times, Muthana had a US passport when she left the United States. Pompeo's statement was unclear whether her citizenship had been revoked or whether she had ever been a US citizen.
More than four years ago, she bought a plane ticket for Turkey with her school fees and was smuggled into Syria. The 24-year-old woman was married to three ISIS fighters, two were killed and one was divorced.
After joining ISIS, she attended executions and urged others to join the group in social media posts critical of the United States.
She told the Times that she had begun to doubt her decision to join the terrorist group in her second year in Syria when she was married to her second husband and pregnant with her son.
"I ruined my life. I've ruined my future, "she said.
"I realized how much I did not appreciate or maybe even really understand the importance of the freedoms we have in America. That's what I'm doing now, "she wrote to a lawyer who was trying to help her return to the United States. "To say that I regret my words from the past, any pain that I have caused to my family and any anxiety I would cause to my country would be difficult to express properly."
Pompeo's statement also failed to speak to a second New York Times woman with dual citizenship in Canada and the United States who was seeking to return home after joining ISIS. Kimberly Gwen Polman lived in Canada before joining ISIS.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has pressured Europe to take over Islamic State fighters captured in Syria as the United States prepares to withdraw its troops from the country. Until now, Europe has been reluctant to take back their citizens in the face of possible legal problems.
The UK refused to allow a London teenager to return to the country after declaring last week that she wanted to "go home" after joining ISIS four years ago.
Shamima Begum, 19, told the London Times that she did not regret having run away to Syria, but feared for her newborn's life. Begum gave birth during the weekend and two other children died in Syria.
The UK said it was considering revoking its British citizenship to prevent it from coming back.
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