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1. A few days ago, I sat down with Hoda Muthana,m in Syria. She had traveled from Alabama to Syria on a US passport but she was worried that her US citizenship might be called into question. That’s exactly what has happened. See statement from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: 
2. Muthana, now 24, has already been issued two US passports: Once when she was a child and the second one in 2014, when she used it to travel overseas to join ISIS. So how can Pompeo say that she’s not a citizen? The technicality is that she is the daughter of a Yemeni diplomat.
3. According to the 14th amendment, people born in the US - as Muthana was - are citizens of the US and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” What does that mean if you’re the daughter of a Yemeni diplomat? Well a diplomat is subject to the jurisdiction of his or her own country
4. But I just got off the phone with Muthana’s family attorney and this rule doesn’t apply to her because her father was discharged from his UN post 1 month before she was born. At the time of her birth, Muthana’s father was no longer a diplomat hence the exclusion is not valid
5. When Muthana first received her US passport when she was a child, her father was asked to produce proof that he had been discharged from his diplomatic post. Authorities reviewed her case, says her family lawyer, and handed her not just her first passport but also her second.
6. So why is the US *now* saying that she isn’t a citizen? This being the same girl that applied for a renewal of her passport in 2014, received the said passport, and successfully used it to fly from Birmingham to Istanbul? Those trying to help her say that this a “legal dodge.”
7. Sources tell us that the US may not have enough to successfully charge her. This is an easy way to offload her. According to data tracked by the Times, there are at least 13 Americans tied to ISIS languishing detention camps in Syria. Almost all are women/l and children
